UC-NRLF 


.ARLYLES 

\L  ANDRELI.GIOU5 

DEVELOPMENT 


EWALD  PLUG 


r 


REESE   LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


THOMAS  GARLYLE'S 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  DEVELOPMENT 


A  STUDY:  BY  EWALD  FLUGEL. 


FROM  THE  GERMAN,  BY 

dESSIGA   GILBERT  TYLER. 


WITH    A    PORTRAIT. 


NEW  YORK  : 

M.    L.    HOLBROOK   &   CO. 
1891. 


COPYRIGHT  BY 

M.   L.   HOLBROOK, 

1891. 


TO 

MY  FATHEK, 

WITH 

LOVE  AND  GRATITUDE. 


"  Indisputably  enough,  what  notion  each  forms 
of  the  Universe  is  the  all-regulating  fact  with 
regard  to  him." 

LATTER-DAY  PAMPHLETS,  p.  253. 

"  Do  you  ask  why  misery  abounds  among  us  ? 
I  bid  you  look  into  the  notion  we  have  formed  for 
ourselves  of  the  Universe,  and  of  our  duties  and 
destinies  there.  If  it  is  a  true  notion,  we  shall 
strenuously  reduce  it  to  practice, — for  who  dare 
and  can  contradict  his  faith,  whatever  it  may  be, 
in  the  Eternal  Fact  that  is  around  him?  and 
thereby  blessings  and  success  will  attend  us  in 
said  Universe,  or  Eternal  Fact  we  live  amidst : 
of  that  surely  there  is  no  doubt." 

EBENDA,  p.  252. 


TEANSLATOK'S  PKEFACE. 


"  It  is  well  said,  in  every  sense,  that  a  man's 
religion  is  the  chief  fact  with  regard  to  him." 

"By  religion,"  Carlyle  says,  "I  do  not  mean 
here  the  church  creed  which  he  professes,  the  arti- 
cles of  faith  which  he  will  sign  and,  in  words  or 
otherwise,  assert;  not  this  wholly,  in  many  cases 
not  this  at  all.  We  see  men  of  all  kinds  of  pro- 
fessed creeds  attain  to  almost  all  degrees  of  worth 
or  worthlessness  tinder  each  or  any  of  them.  This 
is  not  what  I  call  religion,  this  profession  and  as- 
sertion, which  is  often  only  a  profession  and  asser- 
tion from  the  outworks  of  the  man,  from  the  mere 
argumentative  region  of  him,  if  even  so  deep  as 
that.  But  the  thing  a  man  does  practically  be- 
lieve (and  this  is  often  enough  without  asserting  it 
even  to  himself,  much  less  to  others) ;  the  thing  a 
man  does  practically  lay  to  heart,  and  know  for 
certain,  concerning  his  vital  relations  to  this  mys- 
terious Universe,  and  his  duty  and  destiny  there, 
that  is  in  all  cases  the  primary  thing  for  him,  and 
creatively  determines  all  the  rest.  That  is  his 
religion;  or,  it  may  be,  his  mere  scepticism  and 


xii  TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE. 

no-religion :  the  manner  it  is  in  which  he  feels 
himself  to  be  spiritually  related  to  the  unseen 
world  or  no-world ;  and  I  say,  if  you  tell  me  what 
that  is,  you  tell  me  to  a  very  great  extent  what  the 
man  is,  what  the  kind  of  things  he  will  do  is.  Of 
a  man  or  a  nation  we  inquire,  therefore,  first  of 
all,  What  religion  they  had?  Was  it  heathen- 
ism,— plurality  of  gods,  mere  sensuous  representa- 
tion of  this  Mystery  of  Life,  and  for  chief  recog- 
nised element  therein  Physical  Force  ?  Was  it 
Christianism ;  faith  in  an  Invisible,  not  as  real 
only,  but  as  the  only  reality ;  Time,  through  every 
meanest  moment  of  it,  resting  on  Eternity ;  Pagan 
empire  of  Force  displaced  by  a  nobler  supremacy, 
that  of  Holiness  ?  Was  it  Scepticism,  uncertainty 
and  inquiry  whether  there  was  an  unseen  world, 
any  mystery  of  life  except  a  mad  one ; — doubt  as 
to  all  this,  or  perhaps  unbelief  and  flat  denial? 
Answering  of  this  question  is  giving  us  the  soul  of 
the  history  of  the  man  or  nation.  The  thoughts 
they  had  were  the  parents  of  the  actions  they  did ; 
their  feelings  were  parents  of  their  thoughts  :  it 
was  the  unseen  and  spiritual  in  them  that  deter- 
mined the  outward  and  actual ; — their  religion,  as 
I  say,  was  the  great  fact  about  them." 

These  few  words  of  Carlyle's,  taken  from  his 
lecture  on  "  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship,"  crowd 
;nto  a  nutshell  the  substance  of  his  belief.  It  was 


TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE.  xiii 

a  belief  of  actions,  not  of  words.     He  cared  little 
or  nothing  for  what  a  man  professed,  unless  what 
he  said  was  corroborated  by  what  he  did.     The  ^ 
performing  of  one's  duty  was  the  chief,  the  vital/ 
thing  in  this  life.     "Too  much  thinking  and  not 
enough  doing  "  was  a  favourite  saying  of  his. 

In  a  letter  to  Dr.  Fliigel  from  Mr.  Froude, 
he  says  :  "  Your  admirable  little  book  is  the  first 
sign  I  have  seen  of  an  independent  and  clear 
insight  into  Carlyle's  life,  work  and  character, 
as  it  will  one  day  be  universally  recognised  by 
all  mankind.  Leaving  out  Goethe,  Carlyle  was 
indisputably  the  greatest  man  (if  you  measure 
greatness  by  the  permanent  effect  he  has  and  will 
produce  on  the  mind  of  mankind)  who  has  ap- 
peared in  Europe  for  centuries.  You  have  seen 
into  this  and  know  to  appreciate  it.  His  charac- 
ter was  as  remarkable  as  his  intellect.  There  has 
been  no  man  at  all,  not  Goethe  himself,  who  in 
thought  and  action  was  so  consistently  true  to  his 
noblest  instincts." 

A  word  is  needed  with  reference  to  the  transla- 
tion of  this  book,  and  certain  alterations  and 
omissions  which  have  been  made. 

It  was  thought  best  to  omit  Part  I,  the  Appen- 
dix, and  most  of  the  Notes,  which  deal  almost 
exclusively  with  facts  in  Carlyle's  life  so  familiar 
from  an  American  point  of  view,  and,  moreover 


xiv  TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE. 

so  thoroughly  well  treated  by  Froude,  Norton, 
Eichard  Garnett  and  others,  that  it  would  be  like 
offering  coals  to  Newcastle  to  offer  them  to  an 
American  reading  public. 

The  translation  has  also  been  carefully  examined 
by  the  Author,  thus  removing,  in  a  measure,  much 
responsibility  in  regard  to  it;  but  the  final  de- 
cision as  to  a  choice  of  English  expressions,  rest- 
ed with  the  translator,  who  has  to  thank,  as  well 
as  the  Author,  Mr.  Albert  Miller,  of  Detroit, 
Michigan,  for  kind  assistance. 

J.  G.  T, 

Ithaca,  N.  T., 

Jan.  26th,  1891. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

Frontispiece.-  Portrait  of  Thomas  Carlyle 

Translator's  Preface 11 

Author's  Preface 15 

Author's  Introduction 17 

CHAPTER  I. 
CARLYLE'S  BELIEF. 

The  Mystery  of  the  World  and  Life 23 

Wonder  and  Astonishment 24 

Natural  Supernaturnlism      .         .         .         .         .         .         .29 

The  Laws  of  Nature 30 

The  Book  of  Nature 31 

Space  and  Time       .                 32 

The  Infinite  Unfathomable 33 

The  Kernel  of  Carlyle's  Religious  Belief  ....  38 

CHAPTER  H. 

THE  MECHANICAL  AGE. 

Inexorable  Antagonism  to  Mechanical  Things     ...  40 

Machines  for  Education 41 

Philosophy,  Science,  Art— all  depend  on  Machinery    .        .  48 

CHAPTER  III. 

CAKLYLE'S  RELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY. 

I. —His  Position  with  Reference  to  the  Personality  of 

Christ 45 

II.— His  Perception  of  the  Meaning  of  Christianity  in  the 

World's  History    .......  46 

in.  -  His  View  of  the  Nature  of  Christianity        ...  48 


Till  CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

His  View  of  the  Doctrine  of  Predestination          ...       53 

The  Religion  of  Suffering 55 

Goethe's  Joyous  Contemplation  of  the  World      ...      57 

CHAPTER  IV. 

CARLYLE    AND    THE    VARIOUS   PHASES   or   CHRISTIANITY  :    THE 
CHUKCH  AND  THEOLOGICAL  LEABNING. 

The  Bible 65 

The  Church 67 

The  Metaphysical  and  Philosophical  Treatment  of  Religious 

Questions 71 

Jesuits 73 

Religion  takes  refuge  in  the  Stomach  !    .        .        .        .  74 

CHAPTER  V. 
GOD. 

The  "New  Religion" 77 

CHAPTER  VI. 

CABLYLE'S  POSITION  WITH  REFERENCE  TO  SCIENCE,  AND  ESPECIAL- 
LY TO  PHILOSOPHY. 

The  Limits  of  Philosophy 82 

English  and  Freuch  Philosophy 

Locke,  Reid,  Hume,  Hartley,  etc 

Cabanis 

German  Philosophy W 

Kant         .         , 9° 

Fichte 

Schelling  and  Hegel 

The  Disease  of  Metaphysics 98 


CONTENTS.  IX 

CHAPTER    VII. 

CARLYLE'S  POSITION   WITH   REFERENCE   TO  POETRY   AND  ART  IN 
GENERAL. 

PAGE. 

The  Object  of  Poetry .100 

Milton's  Ideal  as  a  Poet 104 

Carlyle's  Ideal  as  a  Poet 105 

Prophet  and  Poet 109 

Penetration •  HI 

Music.     Song 113 

Small  Interest  in  the  Plastic  Arts 118 

Portraiture 120 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  HISTORY. 

Man,  a  Divine  Creation      ...         •  .122 

Artist  and  Mechanic       .......  126 

The  True  Poetry 129 

Carlyle's  Heroism  . 130 

The  Lesson's  of  the  World's  History          ....  131 

Carlyle  and  Aristotle 132 

CHAPTER    IX. 

CARLYLE'S  ETHICS:  "THE  GOSPEL  OP  WORK.'* 

The  Unity  of  Mind  and  Morals 135 

Renunciation 137 

The  Ideal  of  Higher  Morality 138 

His  Mission 139 

The  Lessons  of  His  Life  140 


AUTHOE'S  PEEFACE. 


"From  the  'silence  of  the  eternities,'  of  which  he  so  often 
spoke,  there  still  sound,  and  will  long  sound,  the  tones  of  that 
marvellous  voice."— Dean  Stanley's  sermon  on  the  occasion  of 
the  Death  of  Mr.  Carlyle. 

"  Suffer  me,  then,  to  say  a  few  words  on  the 
good  seed  which  he  has  sown  in  our  hearts  "  were 
the  words  of  Dean  Stanley  in  his  impressive 
funeral  sermon  on  Carlyle,  which  was  delivered 
on  the  6th  of  February,  1881,  in  Westminster 
Abbey — and  these  words  express  the  feeling  which 
has  actuated  the  undertaking  of  the  present  work. 

In  England,  Carlyle's  views  of  life  have  often 
been  made  the  subject  of  inquiry,  but  they  have 
either  been  scattered  in  periodical  publications, 
or  have  been  partially  colored,  or  could  hold 
no  claim  of  having  been  scientifically  treated, 
which  means  nothing  more,  in  biography,  at  least, 
than  a  clear  and  conscientious  arrangement  of 
matter.  In  Germany,  Carlyle's  views  of  life  have 
generally  been  little  considered.  We  willingly 
praised  him,  and  praise  him  now,  as  the  friend 
of  our  nation,  the  admirer  of  our  distinguished 
men,  but  with  that  the  whole  matter  ended,  with 
but  few  exceptions. 


XVI  AUTHOR  S    PREFACE. 

Since  the  appearance  of  Fronde's  great  biog- 
raphy, and  since  the  Carlyle  archives  have  re- 
vealed their  treasures,  it  has  become  our  duty 
to  gather  together  in  part  the  results  of  these  in- 
vestigations ;  and  to  accomplish  this  in  the  de- 
partment in  which  Carlyle's  principal  work  is  of 
importance  for  his  people  and  literature  in  gen- 
eral was  the  serious  endeavor  of  the  Author. 

He  has  first  to  express  his  thanks  to  Mr. 
Froude,  who,  through  his  great  Life  of  Carlyle, 
was  the  incentive  to  the  present  work,  also  to  the 
estimable  friend  of  Carlyle,  Professor  David  Mas- 
son,  and  lastly,  and  above  all,  for  her  willingness 
to  render  assistance  and  information,  to  the  niece 
of  Carlyle,  who,  in  truest  solicitude,  made  the 
last  years  of  the  great  man's  life  easier  and  more 
beautiful. 

Before  concluding  these  remarks,  the  name  of 
Eichard  Garnett,  which  is  familiar  to  all  who  have 
worked  in  the  British  Museum,  calls  to  mind  a 
small  work  on  Carlyle,  which  gives  in  its  conclud- 
ing chapter  a  short  but  excellent  picture  of  Car- 
lyle's views.  I  should  like  to  recommend  the 
reading  of  this  chapter,  as  well  as  of  the  whole 
work,  where  the  bibliography  of  Carlyle  has  been 
arranged  in  its  best  form. 

Herrenhaus,  Raschwitz^  near  Leipzig, 

November,  1887. 


THf 

UNIVERSITY 


AUTHOR'S  INTRODUCTION. 


Near  the  Scotch  country  town,  Ayr,  about  an 
hour  from  the  sea  shore,  stands  a  poor  little  hut, 
which  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  received 
its  light  through  a  single  window  that  was  not 
much  larger  than  a  quarter  of  a  sheet  of  paper, 
when  "  Genius "  made  an  entrance  into  it,  and 
Robert  Burns  was  born.  What  the  interior  of 
the  peasant's  hut  could  not  offer,  the  blossom- 
ing son  of  the  poet  found  in  the  charming  sur- 
roundings of  the  paternal  home. 

One  can  indeed  feel,  when  one  stands  upon  the 
Auld  Brig  o'  Doon  and  looks  back  to  the  old 
times,  how  the  boy's  dreamy  and  poetical  nature 
was  inspired;  and  if  one  approaches  the  ivy- 
covered  ruins  of  Alloway  Kirk  and  the  old  ceme- 
tery, the  wanderer  is  filled  with  awe,  as  was  once 
the  good  Tarn  o'  Shanter. 

Much  more  rugged  are  the  surroundings  of 
another  Scotch  hamlet,  situated  several  miles 
southward.  A  single  country  road  guides  the 
traveller — and  hundreds  make  pilgrimages  yearly 
to  this  little  village — to  a  very  poor-looking  house, 


XV111 

into  which,  five  years  before  the  expiration  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  another  "  Genius "  made  en- 
trance, and  Thomas  Carlyle  was  born. 

One  is  involuntarily  compelled  to  compare  the 
straightened  circumstances  in  which  both  men 
were  born,  and  from  which  one  of  them  was  never 
permitted  for  long  to  raise  himself,  but  from  which 
the  other  became  brilliantly  transformed  through 
unheard-of  strength  of  will  and  unceasing  indus- 
try— through  a  strength  of  will  which  the  other, 
unfortunately,  lacked. 

The  career  of  both  men  was  a  tragedy.  If  we 
approach  in  spirit  the  death-bed  of  Burns  in  the 
forlorn  house  at  Dumfries,  and  reflect  upon  what 
more  this  genius  might  have  done  for  the  world 
and  himself ;  what  he,  indeed,  owed  the  world 
and  himself  ;  what  divine  power  in  him  still  wait- 
ed for  full  maturity, — or,  if  we  enter  the  death- 
chamber  in  Cheyne  Row,  where  the  heart  of  a 
hero  burst  with  a  sigh — a  hero  who,  to  be  sure, 
accomplished  everything  which  in  a  long  and 
checkered  life  he  had  been  able  to  accomplish 
before  God  and  man  ;  we  stand  by  the  bier  of  a 
man  who,  with  the  greatest  warmth  of  heart,  with 
the  greatest  strength  of  intellect,  although  his  life 
was  spent  in  the  most  assiduous  labor,  was  never 
long  happy. 

But,  as  with  Burns,  in  the  termination  of  Car- 


AUTHOR'S  INTRODUCTION.  xix 

lyle's  powerful  life,  there  is  no  discord.  Earnest 
regrets  fill  the  heart,  but  they  brkig  their  own 
reconciliation,  as  true  tragedy  always  does.  I 
hope  to  be  able  in  what  follows  to  point  out  the 
(^sublimity  of  Carlyle's  spiritual  life — a  sublimity 
from  which,  as  from  a  lofty  mountain,  the  eye 
discerns  far  and  near  numberless  beautiful  val- 
leys — a  sublimity  from  which  the  soul  itself  feels 
freer  and  larger.  } 

Goethe  recognized  clearly  the  characteristic  of 
Carlyle's  aspirations  when  he  uttered  on  July 
25th,  1827,  the  following  words  :  "It  is  especially 
admirable  in  Carlyle,  that  in  his  criticism  of  our 
German  writers  he  recognises  the  spiritual  and 
moral  kernel  as  the  most  efficacious.  He  is,  in- 
deed, a  moral  force  of  great  significance.  There 
is  a  great  future  awaiting  him,  and  it  is  not  at  all 
possible  to  predict  what  he  will  be  able  to  accom- 
plish." 

And  to  consider  Carlyle  as  a  "  moral  force  "  is 
the  object  of  this  book.  Before  we  turn  our  atten- 
tion, however,  to  an  explanation  of  his  moral  and 
religious  views,  it  seems  to  me  appropriate  to  con- 
sider for  a  moment  the  history  of  his  inner  life, 
especially  with  reference  to  its  moral  and  religious 
side. 

The  inner  life  of  Carlyle  divides  itself  into  three 
great  epochs  :  first,  his  youth,  which  embraced 


xx  AUTHOR'S  INTRODUCTION. 

the  years  spent  in  the  paternal  home  and  in  Edin- 
burgh (to  the  year  1816) ;  second,  those  years 
which  might  properly  be  called  his  apprentice- 
ship, when  he  began  to  fight  the  battles  with  his 
own  nature  in  Kirkcaldy,  the  chief  fruit  of  which 
is  his  acquaintance  with  the  German  classics ;  and 
third,  the  long  and  important  period  of  his  life 
which  begins  about  the  time  of  his  departure  to 
London  in  1834,  and  ends  with  his  death  there  in 
1881. 

From  1834  to  1881  are  the  richest  years  of  his 
life,  and  show  to  the  world  how  Goethe's  pro- 
phetic word  was  to  be  fulfilled. 


THOMAS  CARLYLE'S  MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS 
DEVELOPMENT. 


CHAPTEE  I. 
CAELYLE'S  BELIEF. 

IN  "  Sartor  Eesartus,"  Professor  Teufelsdrockh, 
of  Weissnichtwo,  imparts  the  following  ideas : 

"With  men  of  a  speculative  turn  there  come 
seasons — meditative,  sweet,  yet  awful  hours — 
when,  in  wonder  and  fear,  you  ask  yourself  that 
unanswerable  question :  Who  am  I ;  the  thing 
that  can  say,  I  ? 

"  The  world,  with  its  loud  train"  cing,  retires 
into  the  distance,  and  through  the  paper-hang- 
ings and  stone  walls,  and  thick-plied  tissue  of 
Commerce  and  Polity,  and  all  the  living  and 
lifeless  integuments  (of  Society  and  a  Body) 
wherewith  your  existence  sits  surrounded, — the 
sight  reaches  forth  into  the  void  Deep,  and  you 


24  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

are  alone  with  the  Universe,  and  silently  com- 
mune with  it,  as  one  mysterious  Presence  with 
another. 

"Who  am  I?  What  is  this  Me?  A  voice,  a 
motion,  an  appearance, — some  embodied,  visual- 
ised Idea  in  the  Eternal  Mind  ?  Cogito,  ergo  sum. 
Alas,  poor  Cogitator,  this  takes  us  but  a  little 
way.  Sure  enough,  I  am ;  and  lately  was  not ; 
but  Whence?  How?  Where  to?  The  answer 
lies  around,  written  in  all  colors  and  motions, 
uttered  in  all  tones  of  jubilee  and  wail,  in  thou- 
sand-figured, thousand-voiced  harmonious  Nature : 
but  where  is  the  cunning  eye  and  ear  to  whom 
that  God-written  Apocalypse  will  yield  articulate 
meaning  ?  We  sit  as  in  a  boundless  phantasma- 
goria and  dream-grotto  ;  boundless,  for  the  paint- 
ed star,  the  remotest  century,  lies  not  even  nearer 
the  verge  thereof :  sounds  and  many-coloured 
visions  flit  around  our  sense ;  but  Him,  the  Un- 
slumbering,  whoso  work  both  dream  and  dreamer 
are,  we  see  not ;  except  in  half- waking  moments, 
suspect  not. 

"  Creation,  says  one,  lies  before  us,  like  a  glori- 
ous rainbow ;  but  the  ran  that  made  it,  lies  be- 
hind us,  hidden  from  us.  Then  in  that  strange 
dream,  how  we  clutch  at  shadows  as  if  they  were 
substance  ;  and  sleep  deepest  while  fancying  our- 
selves most  awake ! 


CARLYLE'S  BELIEF.  25 

"  Which  of  your  philosophical  systems  is  other 
than  a  dream-theorem — a  net  quotient,  confi- 
dently given  out,  where  divisor  and  dividend  are 
both  unknown  ?  "  * 

"  To  the  eye  of  vulgar  logic,  what  is  man  ?  An 
omnivorous  biped  that  wears  breeches.  To  the 
eye  of  pure  reason,  what  is  he  ?  A  soul,  a  spirit, 
a  divine  apparition.  Round  his  mysterious  Me 
there  lies,  under  all  those  wool-rags,  a  Gar- 
ment of  Flesh  (or  of  Senses)  contextured  in  the 
Loom  of  Heaven ;  whereby  he  is  revealed  to 
his  like,  and  dwells  with  them  in  Union  and 
Division ;  and  sees  and  fashions  for  himself  a 
Universe,  with  azure  Starry  Spaces,  and  long 
Thousands  of  Years.  Deep-hidden  is  he  under 
that  Strange  Garment ;  amid  Sounds  and  Col- 
ours and  Forms,  as  it  were,  swathed-in,  and 
inextricably  over-shrouded :  yet  it  is  sky -woven 
and  worthy  of  a  God.  Stands  he  not  thereby 
in  the  centre  of  Immensities,  in  the  conflux  of 
Eternities  ? 

"  He  feels ;  the  power  has  been  given  him  to 
know,  to  believe  ;  nay,  does  not  the  spirit  of  love, 
free  in  its  primeval  brightness,  even  here,  though 
but  for  garments,  look  through  ?  Well  said  Saint 
Chrysostom,  with  his  lips  of  gold  :  '  the  true  She- 
kinah  is  man.'  Where  else  is  the  God's  Presence 


*  Sartor  Kesartus,  p.  35. 


26  THOMAS   CABLYLE. 

manifested    not    to    our   eyes   only,   but   to   our 
hearts,  as  in  our  fellow-man  ?  "  * 

"For  the  rest,"  continues  Carlyle,  ""as  is  natural 
to  a  man  of  this  kind,  Professor  Teufelsdrockh 
deals  much  in  the  feeling  of  wonder;  insists  on 
the  necessity  of  high  worth  of  universal  Won- 
der; which  he  holds  to  be  the  only  reasonable 
temper  for  the  denizen  of  so  singular  a  Planet 
as  ours."  t 

t"  Wonder,"   says  he,   "  is  the  basis  of  Worship  : 
e  reign  of  Wonder  is  perennial,  indestructible 
Man  ;   only  Itir  certain  stages  (as  the  present) 
it  is,  for  some  short  season,  a  reign  in  partibus 
infidelium.     That  progress   of   science,  which  is 
to   destroy  Wonder,   and  in   its  stead  substitute 
Mensuration   and  Numeration  finds  small  favour 
with  Teufelsdrockh,  much  as  he  otherwise  vener- 
ates these  two  latter  processes. 

"  Shall*  your  Science,"  exclaims  he,  "  proceed 
in  the  small  chink-lighted,  or  even  oil-lighted, 
underground  workshop  of  Logic  alone,  and  man's 
mind  become  an  Arithmetical  Mill,  whereof  Mem- 
ory is  the  Hopper,  and  mere  Tables  of  Lines  and 
Tangents,  Codifications,  and  Treatises  of  what  you 
call  Political  Economy,  are  the  Meal  ?  And  what 
is  that  Science,  which  the  scientific  head  alone, 


*  Sartor  Kesartus,  p.  44. 
fOp.  cit,  p.  45. 


CAKLYLE'S  BELIEF.  27 

were  it  screwed  off,  and  (like  the  Doctor's  in  the 
Arabian  Tale)  set  in  a  basin  to  keep  it  alive,  could 
prosecute  without  shadow  of  a  heart, — but  one 
other  of  the  mechanical  and  menial  handicrafts, 
for  which  the  Scientific  Head  (having  a  Soul  in 
it)  is  too  noble  an  organ  ? 

"  I  mean  that  Thought  without  Reverence  is 
barren,  perhaps  poisonous ;  at  best,  dies  like 
cookery,  with  the  day  that  called  it  forth  ;  does 
not  live,  like  sowing,  in  successive  tilths  and 
wider-spreading  harvests,  bringing  food  and  plen- 
teous increase  to  all  Time.  In  such  wise  does 
Teufelsdrockh  deal  hits,  harder  or  softer,  accord- 
ing to  ability  ;  yet  ever,  as  we  would  fain  per- 
suade ourselves,  with  charitable  intent.  Above 
all,  that  class  of  Logic-choppers,  and  treble-pipe 
Scoffers,  and  professed  Enemies  to  Wonder,  who, 
in  these  days,  so  numerously  patrol  as  night 
constables  about  the  Mechanic's  Institute  of 
Science,  and  cackle,  like  Old-Roman  geese  and 
goslings  round  their  Capitol,  on  any  alarm,  or 
on  none  ;  nay,  who  often,  as  illuminated  Sceptics, 
walk  abroad  into  peaceable  society,  in  full  day- 
light, with  rattle  and  lantern,  and  insist  on  guid- 
ing you  and  guarding  you  therewith,  though  the 
Sun  is  shining,  and  the  street  populous  with 
mere  justice -loving  men :  that  whole  class  is  in- 


28  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

expressibly  wearisome  to  him.     Hear  with  what 
uncommon  animation  he  perorates  : 

" '  The  man  who  cannot  wonder,  who  does 
not  habitually  wonder  (and  worship),  were  he 
President  of  innumerable  Royal  Societies,  and 
carried  the  whole  Mechanique  Celeste  and  Hegel's 
Philosophy,  and  the  epitome  of  all  Laboratories 
and  Observatories,  with  their  results,  in  his  single 
head, — is  but  a  Pair  of  Spectacles  behind  which 
there  is  no  Eye.  Let  those  who  have  Eyes  look 
through  him,  then  he  may  be  useful.  Thou  wilt 
have  no  Mystery  or  Mysticism  ;  wilt  walk  through 
thy  world  by  the  sunshine  of  what  thou  callest 
Truth,  or  even  by  the  hand  lamp  of  what  I  call 
Attorney-Logic;  and  'explain'  all,  'account'  for 
all,  or  believe  nothing  of  it  ?  Nay,  thou  wilt 
attempt  laughter ;  whoso  recognises  the  un- 
fathomable, all-pervading  domain  of  Mystery, 
which  is  everywhere  under  our  feet  and  among 
our  hands ;  to  whom  the  "Universe  is  an  Oracle 
and  Temple,  as  well  as  a  Kitchen  and  Cattle- 
stall, — he  shall  be  a  delirious  Mystic ;  to  him 
thou,  with  sniffing  charity,  wilt  protrusively  proffer 
thy  hand-lamp,  and  shriek,  as  one  injured,  when 
he  kicks  his  foot  through  it  ?  Armer  Teufel ! 
Doth  not  thy  cow  calve  ?  Doth  not  thy  bull 
gender  ?  Thou  thyself,  wert  thou  not  born ; 
wilt  thou  not  die?  'Explain'  me  all  this,  or 


CARLYLE'S  BELIEF.  29 

do  one  of  two  things:  Retire  into  private  places 
with  thy  foolish  cackle ;  or,  what  were  better, 
give  it  up  and  weep,  not  that  the  reign  of 
wonder  is  done,  and  God's  world  all  disembel- 
lished  and  prosaic,  but  that  thou  hitherto  art  a 
Dilettante  and  sand-blind  Pedant.'  "  * 

Carlyle  characterizes  Teufelsdrockh's  doctrines 
as  "  Natural  Supernaturalism "  which  might  be 
said  to  lie  at  the  foundation  of  his  own  views 
of  life,  which,  however,  we  prefer  to  denominate 
"  Religious  Idealism,"  for  it  is  an  idealism  in  uX  If 
which  a  theological  and  religious  principle  plays 
a  very  important  part. 

"We  must  cite  a  few  more  passages  from  this 
chapter  on  "  Natural  Supernaturalism  "  in  order 
to  give,  as  far  as  is  possible  in  his  own  words, 
an  accurate  idea  of  the  essence  of  his  belief. 

Teufelsdrockh  deals  severely  with  these  philo- 
sophical world  expounders,  and  discourses  at 
length  on  the  physical  and  incomprehensible 
"  laws "  of  the  universe,  attempting  to  explain 
what  those  same  unalterable  laws — "  forming  the 
complete  statute-book  of  nature  may  possibly  be." 

"  They  stand  written  in  our  works  of  science, 
say  you;  in  the  accumulated  record  of  man's 
experience !  "Was  man  with  his  experience  pre- 
sent at  the  creation,  then,  to  see  how  it  all 


*  Sartor  Eesartus,  p.  47. 


30  THOMAS   CABLYLE. 

went  on  ?  Have  any  deepest  scientific  individuals 
yet  dived  down  to  the  foundations  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  gauged  everything  there?  Did  the 
Maker  take  them  into  His  counsel;  that  they 
read  His  ground-plan  of  the  incomprehensible 
All ;  and  can  say,  This  stands  marked  therein, 
and  no  more  than  this  ?  Alas,  not  in  anywise ! 
These  scientific  individuals  have  been  nowhere 
but  where  we  also  are ;  have  seen  some  hand- 
breadths  deeper  than  we  see  into  the  Deep  that 
is  infinite;  without  bottom  as  without  shore. 

"  Laplace's  Book  on  the  Stars,  wherein  he  ex- 
hibits that  certain  Planets,  with  their  Satellites, 
gyrate  round  our  Sun,  at  a  rate  and  in  a  course, 
by  greatest  good  fortune,  he  and  the  like  of  him 
have  succeeded  in  detecting, — is  to  me  as  precious 
as  to  another.  But  is  this  what  thou  namest 
*  Mechanism  of  the  Heavens,'  and  t  Systems  of 
the  World  ; '  this,  wherein  Sirius  and  the  Pleiades, 
and  all  Herschel's  fifteen  thousand  Suns  per  min- 
ute, being  left  out,  some  paltry  handfuls  of  Moons, 
and  inert  Balls,  had  been — looked  at,  nick-named, 
and  marked  in  the  Zodiacal  Way-bill ;  so  that  we 
can  now  prate  of  their  Whereabout ;  their  How, 
their  Why,  their  What  being  hid  from  us,  as  in 
the  signless  Inane  ? 

"  System  of  Nature  !  To  the  wisest  man,  wide 
as  is  his  vision,  Nature  remains  of  quite  infinite 


CAELYLE'S  BELIEF.  31 

depth,  of  quite  infinite  expansion ;  and  all  Ex- 
perience thereof  limits  itself  to  some  few  com- 
puted centuries  and  measured  square  miles. 
.  .  .  .  We  speak  of  the  Volume  of  Nature : 
and  truly  a  Yolume  it  is, — whose  author  and 
writer  is  God.  To  read  it!  Dost  thou,  does 
man,  so  much  as  well  know  the  Alphabet  thereof  ? 
With  its  Words,  Sentences,  and  grand  descriptive 
Pages,  poetical  and  philosophical,  spread  out 
through  Solar  Systems,  and  Thousands  of  Years, 
we  shall  not  try  thee.  It  is  a  Volume  written 
in  celestial  hieroglyphs,  in  the  true  Sacred  writ- 
ing ;  of  which  even  Prophets  are  happy  that  they 
can  read  here  a  line  and  there  a  line.  As  for 
your  Institutes,  and  Academies  of  Science,  they 
strive  bravely ;  and,  from  amid  the  thick-crowded, 
inextricably  intertwisted  hieroglyphic  writing, 
pick  out  by  dextrous  combination,  some  Letters 
in  the  vulgar  Character,  and  therefrom  put  to- 
gether this  and  the  other  economic  Recipe,  of 
high  avail  in  Practice.  That  Nature  is  more  than 
some  boundless  Volume  of  such  Recipes,  or  huge, 
well-nigh  inexhaustible  Domestic  Cookery  Book, 
of  which  the  whole  secret  will  in  this  manner 
one  day  evolve  itself,  the  fewest  dream."  * 

Teufelsdrockh-Carlyle  then  speaks  of  those  "  il- 
lusory appearances,  the  two  grand  fundamental 


Sartor  Resartus,  pp.  177-180. 


32  THOMAS   CAKLYLE. 

world-enveloping  Appearances,  Space  and  Time. 
These,  as  spun  and  woven  for  us  from  Birth  itself, 
to  clothe  our  celestial  Me  for  dwelling  here,  and 
yet  to  blind  it, — lie  all-embracing,  as  the  universal 
canvas,  or  warp  and  woof,  whereby  all  minor 
Illusions,  in  this  Phantasm  Existence,  weave  and 
paint  themselves.  In  vain,  while  here  on  earth, 
shall  you  endeavor  to  strip  them  off;  you  can, 
at  best,  but  rend  them  asunder  for  moments, 
and  look  through."* 

"  Is  the  Past  annihilated,  then,  or  only  past ; 
is  the  Future  non-extant,  or  only  future  ?  Those 
mystic  faculties  of  thine,  Memory  and  Hope, 
already  answer:  already  through  those  mystic 
avenues,  thou,  the  Earth-blinded,  summonest  both 
Past  and  Future,  and  communest  with  them, 
though  as  yet  darkly,  and  with  mute  beckonings. 
The  curtains  of  Yesterday  drop  down,  the  cur- 
tains of  To-morrow  roll  up ;  but  Yesterday  and 
To-morrow  both  are.  Pierce  through  the  Time- 
element,  glance  into  the  Eternal.  Believe  what 
thou  findest  written  in  the  "sanctuaries  of  Man's 
Soul,  even  as  all  Thinkers,  in  all  ages,  have 
devoutly  read  it  there :  that  Time  and  Space  are 
not  God,  but  creations  of  God ;  that  with  God, 
as  it  is  a  universal  Here,  so  is  it  an  everlasting 
Now. 

*  Sartor  Resartus,  pp.  177-180. 


CAELYLE'S  BELIEF. 


"And  seest  thou  therein  any  glimpse  of  Im- 
morwlity  ?  O  Heaven !  Is  the  white  tomb  of 
our  loved  one,  who  died  from  our  arms,  and  had 
to  be  left  behind  us  there,  which  rises  in  the 
distance,  like  a  pale,  mournfully-receeding  Mile- 
stone, to  tell  how  many  toilsome  uncheered  miles 
we  have  journeyed  on  alone, — but  a  pale  spectral 
Illusion!  Is  the  lost  Friend  still  mysteriously 
Here,  even  as  we  are  Here  mysteriously,  with 
God ! — know  of  a  truth  that  only  the  Time-shad- 
ows have  perished,  or  are  perishable ;  that  the 
real  Being  of  whatever  was,  and  whatever  is,  and 
whatever  will  be,  is  even  now  and  foreverx  This, 
should  it  unhappily  seem  new,  thou  mayest  pon- 
der at  thy  leisure ;  for  the  next  twenty  years,  or 
the  next  twenty  centuries :  believe  it  thou  must ; 

understand  it  thou  canst  not Sweep 

away  the  Illusion  of  Time O,  could 

I  (with  the  Time-annihilating  Hat)  transport 
thee  direct  from  the  Beginnings  to  the  Endings, 
how  were  thy  eyesight  unsealed,  and  thy  heart 
set  naming  in  the  Light-sea  of  celestial  wonder ! 
Then  sawest  thou  that  this  fair  Universe,  were 
it  in  the  meanest  province  thereof,  is  in  very 
deed  the  Star-domed  City  of  God;  that  through 
every  star,  through  every  grass-blade,  and 
most  through  every  Living  Soul,  the  glory  of  a 
present  God  still  beams.  But  Nature,  which  is 


34  THOMAS   CAKLYLE. 

the   Time-vesture    of   God,   and  reveals  Him  to 
the  wise,  hides  Him  from  the  foolish."  * 

Carlyle  then  strolls  into  the  spirit-world  and 
returns  with  the  witty  and  profound  discovery 
that  in  order  to  see  a  "  real  ghost,"  Dr.  Johnson 
did  not  need  to  go  to  the  trouble  of  searching 
spirit-haunted  Cock  Lane,  to  clamber  upon  church 
vaults  and  tap  at  midnight  upon  coffins — all  with- 
out result,  of  course.  "Did  he  never,  with  the 
mind's  eye,  as  well  as  with  the  body's,  look 
around  him  into  that  full  tide  of  human  life  he  so 
loved ;  did  he  never  so  much  as  look  into  himself  ? 
The  good  Doctor  was  a  Ghost,  as  actual  and  au- 
thentic as  heart  could  wish ;  well  nigh  a  million 
Ghosts  were  travelling  the  streets  by  his  side. 
Once  more  I  say,  sweep  away  the  illusion  of 
Time ;  compress  the  threescore  years  into  three 
minutes ;  what  else  was  he,  what  else  are  we  ? 
Are  we  not  Spirits,  that  are  shaped  into  a 
body,  into  an  Appearance;  and  that  fade  away 
again  into  air  and  Invisibility  ?  This  is  no  meta- 
phor, it  is  a  simple  scientific  fact :  we  start  out 
of  Nothingness,  take  figure,  and  are  Apparitions  ; 
round  us,  as  around  the  veriest  spectre,  is  Eter- 
nity ;  and  to  Eternity  minutes  are  as  years  and 
seons."  t 

*  Sartor  Kesartus,  p.  183. 
f  Loc.  cit. 


CAELYLE'S  BELIEF.  35 

"  O  Heaven,  it  is  mysterious,  it  is  awful  to 
consider  that  we  not  only  carry  each  a  future 
Ghost  within  him ;  but  are  in  very  deed,  Ghosts ! 
These  limbs,  whence  had  we  them ;  this  stormy 
Force  ;  this  life-blood  with  its  burning  Passion  ? 
They  are  dust  and  shadow ;  a  Shadow-system 
gathered  round  our  Me ;  wherein,  through  some 
moments  or  years,  the  Divine  Essence  is  to  be 
revealed  in  the  Flesh."  * 

"Thus,  like  a  God-created,  fire-breathing,  Spirit- 
host,  we  emerge  from  the  Inane  ;  haste  storm- 
fuUy  across  the  astonished  Earth ;  then  plunge 
again  into  the  Inane.  Earth's  mountains  are  lev- 
elled, and  her  seas  filled  up,  in  our  passage  :  can 
the  Earth,  which  is  but  dead  and  a  vision,  resist 
Spirits  which  have  reality  and  are  alive  ?  On  the 
hardest  adamant  some  foot-print  of  us  is  stamped- 
in ;  the  last  Hear  of  the  host  will  read  traces  of 
the  earliest  Van.  But  whence?  O  Heaven, 
whither  ?  Sense  knows  not ;  Faith  knows  not ; 
only  that  it  is  through  Mystery  to  Mystery,  from 
God  and  to  God. 

"  <  We  are  such  stuff 

As  dreams  are  made  of,  and  our  little  Life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep  ! '  "  f 

"  Man  begins  in  darkness,  ends  in  darkness ; 
mystery  is  everywhere  around  us  and  in  us,  under 

*  Sartor  Kesartus,  p.  184. 
f  Op.  cit.  pp.  184-185. 


36  THOMAS  CABLYLE. 

our  feet,  among  our  hands.  Nevertheless,  so 
much  has  become  evident  to  every  one,  that  this 
wondrous  Mankind  is  advancing  somewhither; 
that  at  least  all  human  things  are,  have  been,  and 
forever  will  be,  in  Movement  and  Change."  * 

"  Sad,  truly,  were  our  condition  did  we  know 
but  this :  that  Change  is  universal  and  inevitable. 
Launched  into  a  dark  shoreless  sea  of  Pyrrhon- 
ism, what  would  remain  for  us  but  to  sail  aimless, 
hopeless ;  or  make  madly  merry,  while  the  de- 
vouring Death  had  not  yet  ingulfed  us  ?  As,  in- 
deed, we  have  seen  many,  and  yet  see  many  do. 
Nevertheless,  so  stands  it  not. 

"  The  venerator  of  the  Past  (and  to  what  pure 
heart  is  the  Past,  in  that  '  moonlight  of  memory/ 
other  than  sad  and  holy?)  sorrows  not  over  its 
departure,  as  one  utterly  bereaved.  The  true 
Past  departs  not,  nothing  that  was  worthy  in  the 
Past  departs ;  no  Truth  or  Goodness  realised  by 
man  ever  dies,  or  can  die ;  but  is  all  still  here, 
and,  recognised  or  not ;  lives  and  works  through 
endless  changes.  If  all  things,  to  speak  in  the 
German  dialect,  are  discerned  by  us,  and  exist 
for  us,  in  an  element  of  Time,  and  therefore  of 
Mortality  and  Mutability ;  yet  Time  itself  reposes 
on  Eternity :  the  truly  Great  and  Transcendental 

*  Essay  on  Characteristics,  p,  33. 


37 


has  its  basis  and  substance  in  Eternity;  stands 
revealed  to  us  as  Eternity  in  a  vesture  of  Time."  * 

"  Unhappy  he  who  felt  not,  at  all  conjunctures, 
ineradicably  in  his  heart  the  knowledge  that  a 
God  made  this  Universe,  and  a  Demon  not !  And 
shall  Evil  always  prosper,  then  ?  Out  of  all  Evil 
comes  Good;  and  no  Good  that  is  possible  but 
shall  one  day  be  real.  Deep  and  sad  as  is  our 
feeling  that  we  stand  yet  in  the  bodeful  Night ; 
equally  deep,  indestructible  is  our  assurance  that 
the  Morning  also  will  not  fail.  Nay,  already,  as 
we  look  round,  streaks  of  a  day-spring  are  in  the 
east;  it  is  dawning;  when  the  time  shall  be  ful- 
filled, it  will  be  day.  The  progress  of  men  to- 
ward higher  and  nobler  developments  of  whatever 
is  highest  and  noblest  in  him,  lies  not  only  pro- 
phecied  to  Faith,  but  now  written  to  the  eye  of 
Observation,  so  that  he  who  runs  may  read."  t 

"  For  the  rest,  let  that  vain  struggle  to  read  the 
mystery  of  the  Infinite  cease  to  harass  us.  It  is 
a  mystery  which,  through  all  ages,  we  shall  only 
read  here  a  line  of,  there  another  line  of.  Do  we 
not  already  know  that  the  name  of  the  Infinite  is 
Lord,  is  God  ?  Here  on  Earth  we  are  as  Soldiers, 
fighting  in  a  foreign  land ;  that  understand  not 
the  plan  of  the  campaign,  and  have  no  need  to 


*  Essay  on  Characteristics,  pp.  33-34. 
fOp.  cit,  p.  32. 


38  THOMAS   CAELYLE. 

understand  it ;  seeing  well  what  is  at  our  hand  to 
be  done.  Let  us  do  it  like  Soldiers ;  with  sub- 
mission, with  courage,  with  a  heroic  joy.  '  What- 
soever thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with  all  thy 
might.'  Behind  us,  behind  each  one  of  us,  lie 
Six  Thousand  Years  of  human  effort,  human  con- 
quest :  before  us  in  the  boundless  Time,  with  its, 
as  yet,  uncreated  and  unconquered  Continents 
and  Eldorados,  which  we,  even  we,  have  to  con- 
quer, to  create ;  and  from  the  bosom  of  Eternity 
there  shine  for  us  celestial  guiding  stars. 

'  My  inheritance,  how  wide  and  fair  ! 

Time  is  my  fair  seed-field,  of  Time  I'm  heir.'  "  * 

These  thoughts  and  many  more  which  might 
be  found  in  Carlyle's  writings,  contain  the  kernel 
of  his  religious  belief. 

The  Universe,  as  we  see  it  everywhere,  is  an 
infinite  and  divine  mystery — an  infinite  and  divine 
mystery  are  we  ourselves,  as  we  perceive  the 
world  and  its  phenomena  confronting  us.  The 
only  thing  which  we — a  revelation  of  God — are 
able  to  perceive  of  the  other  revelation  of  God, 
the  universe,  is  reverence,  and  worship  of  the 
Divine  Being.  This  "  Worship "  before  the 
Highest — as  it  has  manifested  itself  in  our  souls 
and  everywhere  in  the  world  is  religion ;  religion, 

*  Essay  on  Characteristics,  p.  38. 


CARLYLE'S  BELIEF.  39 

which  not  alone  fills  our  souls  as  a  sentiment,  but 
shows  itself  as  well  in  our  life  and  works,  and  is 
inseparably  bound  with  the  highest  moral  beauty 
which  is  to  have  a  sequel  hereaf  ter.J  That  is  the 
foundation  of  Carlyle's  views,  his  belief,  with 
which  the  man  and  all  his  works  are  permeated. 
From  this  belief  spring  all  his  thoughts  and  judg- 
ments ;  upon  this  foundation  rests  his  view  of 
the  world,  and  all  questions,  solved  or  unsolved, 
which  are  daily  agitating  men's  minds  who  crave 
an  honest  and  intelligent  answer,  and  without 
which,  in  one  way  or  another,  they  may  be 
brought  to  great  discontent 


CHAPTEK    II. 
THE  MECHANICAL  AGE. 

MOTTO  :  ' '  The  marvels  of  Industry  did  not  awe  him,  the 
progress  of  humanity  he  did  not  place  in  the  triumph  of  matter 
in  his  eyes  a  man  was  a  man  only  on  condition  of  being  a  taber- 
nacle of  the  living  God." — "  Wylie's  Carlyle,"  chap.  24. 

Carlyle's  Religious  Idealism  is  now  found  con- 
fronted by  a  "  mechanical  age  ; "  an  age  swayed 
by  a  sort  of  spiritual  and  physical  machine ;  an 
age,  which  suffers  from  the  fact  that  its  noble 
impulses  are  no  longer  brought  out  with  freedom, 
naturally  and  unconsciously,  without  regard  to 
consequences  and  criticism,  but  rather  reach  for- 
ward toward  an  independent  and  imagined  end ; 
not  to  that  one  end,  which  for  Carlyle  is  the  only 
one,  the  kingdom  of  God  on  Earth. 

That  Carlyle,  although  perhaps  too  inexorable 
in  his  antagonism  to  mechanical  things,  is  not 
blind  to  the  results  which  the  progress  in  tech- 
nical and  other  sciences  has  wrought  for  man- 
kind, cannot  be  denied  ;  nevertheless  he  believed 


THE  MECHANICAL  AGE.  41 

his  chief  mission  to  be  in  mercilessly  attacking 
the  experiments  of  the  mechanical  mind  in  dar- 
ing to  interfere  with  fields  with  which  it  has  no 
concern  ;  viz.,  the  fields  of  a  higher,  spiritual  and 
moral  life,  and,  above  all,  in  the  field  of  Re- 
ligion  In  theology,  philosophy  and 

pedagogy,  as  in  all  the  sciences  and  arts,  he 
sees  the  pernicious  increase  of  a  mechanical 
view  of  life. 

"  Thus  we  have  machines  for  Education  ;  Lan- 
castrian machines  ;  Hamiltonian  machines  ;  mon- 
itors, etc.  Instruction,  that  mysterious  commun- 
ing of  Wisdom  with  Ignorance,  is  no  longer  an 
indefinable  tentative  process,  requiring  a  study 
of  individual  aptitudes,  and  a  perpetual  variation 
of  means  and  methods,  to  attain  the  same  end; 
but  a  secure,  universal,  straight-forward  business, 
to  be  conducted  in  the  gross  by  proper  mechan- 
ism, with  such  intellect  as  comes  to  hand.  Then 
we  have  Religious  machines;  of  all  imaginable 
varieties;  the  Bible-Society,  professing  a  far 
higher  and  heavenly  structure,  is  found,  on  in- 
quiry, to  be  altogether  an  earthly  contrivance ; 
supported  by  collection  of  moneys,  by  fomenting 
of  vanities,  by  puffing,  by  intrigue  and  chicane ; 
a  machine  for  converting  the  Heathen.  It  is  the 
same  in  all  other  departments.  Has  any  man,  or 
any  society  of  men  a  truth  to  speak,  a  piece  of 


42  THOMAS   CAELYLE. 

spiritual  work  to  do,  they  can  no  wise  proceed 
at  once  and  with  the  mere  natural  organs,  but 
must  first  call  a  public  meeting,  appoint  com- 
mittees, issue  prospectuses,  eat  a  public  dinner."  * 

"With  individuals,  in  like  manner,  natural 
strength  avails  little.  No  individual  now  hopes 
to  accomplish  the  poorest  enterprise  single-handed 
and  without  mechanical  aids.  He  must  make  in- 
terest with  some  existing  corporation,  and  till  his 
fields  with  their  oxen. 

"  In  these  days,  more  emphatically  than  ever, 
'to  live,  signifies  to  unite  with  a  party,  or  to 
make  one.'  Philosophy,  Science,  Art,  Literature, 
all  depend  on  machinery.  No  Newton,  by  silent 
meditation,  now  discovers  the  System  of  the  World 
from  the  falling  of  an  apple  ;  but  some  quite  other 
than  Newton  stands  in  his  Museum,  his  Scientific 
Institution,  and  behind  whole  batteries  of  retorts, 
digestors  and  galvanic  piles  imperatively  '  interro- 
gates Nature,' — who,  however,  shows  no  haste  to 
answer.  In  defect  of  Raphaels,  and  Angelos,  and 
Mozarts,  we  have  Royal  Academies  of  Painting, 
Sculpture,  Music ;  whereby  the  languishing  Spirit 
of  Art  may  be  strengthened,  as  by  the  more  gen- 
erous diet  of  a  Public  Kitchen.  Literature,  too, 
has  its  Paternoster-row  of  mechanism,  its  Trade 

*  Essay  on  Signs  of  the  Times,  p.  234. 


THE  MECHANICAL  AGE.  43 

dinners,  its  Editorial  conclaves,  and  huge  sub- 
terranean, puffing  bellows ;  so  that  books  are  not 
only  printed,  but  in  a  great  measure  written  and 

sold  by  machinery Men   are   grown 

mechanical  in  head  and  in  heart,  as  well  as  in 
hand.  They  have  lost  faith  in  individual  endea- 
vour, and  in  natural  force  of  any  kind.  Not  for 
internal  perfection,  but  for  external  combinations 
and  arrangements,  for  institutions,  constitutions, — 
for  Mechanism  of  one  sort  or  other,  do  they  hope 
and  struggle."  * 

In  what  follows  an  attempt  will  be  made  to  give 
an  idea  of  Carlyle's  position  with  reference  to  the 
several  departments  of  spiritual  life,  which,  under 
the  influence  of  Mechanism,  have  more  or  less 
suffered. 


*  Essay  on  Signs  of  the  Times,  pp.  235-236. 


CHAPTEE    III. 

CARLTLE'S    RELATION   TO    CHRISTI- 
ANITY. 

1. — His  VIEWS  ON  THE  PERSONALITY  OF  CHRIST. 
2.— His  APPREHENSION  OF  THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
IN  THE  WORLD'S  HISTORY. 
3. — His  NOTION  OF  THE  NATURE  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

"  To  begin  with  our  highest  Spiritual  function, 
with  Religion,"  says  Carlyle,  "we  might  ask, 
Whither  has  Religion  now  fled?  Of  churches 
and  their  establishments  we  here  say  nothing; 
nor  of  the  unhappy  domains  of  Unbelief,  and  how 
innumerable  men,  blinded  in  their  minds,  have 
grown  to  live  without  God  in  the  world ;  but, 
taking  the  fairest  side  of  the  matter,  we  ask,  What 
is  the  nature  of  that  same  Religion,  which  still 
lingers  in  the  hearts  of  the  few,  who  are  called, 
and  call  themselves,  specially  the  Religious  ?  Is 
it  a  healthy  religion,  vital,  unconscious  of  itself ; 
that  shines  forth  spontaneously  in  doing  of  the 
Work,  or  even  in  preaching  of  the  Word  ?  Un- 


CARLYLE'S  RELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.       45 

happily,  No.  Instead  of  heroic  martyr  Conduct, 
and  inspired  and  soul-inspiring  Eloquence,  where- 
by Religion  itself  were  brought  home  to  our  living 
bosoms,  to  live  and  reign  there,  we  have  '  Dis- 
cources  on  the  Evidences,'  endeavouring,  with 
small  results,  to  make  it  probable  that  such  a 
thing  as  Religion  exists.  The  most  enthusiastic 
Evangelicals  do  not  preach  a  Gospel,  but  keep 
describing  how  it  should  and  might  be  preached. 
To  awaken  the  sacred  fire  of  faith,  as  by  a  sacred 
contagion,  is  not  their  endeavour,  but,  at  most, 
to  describe  how  Faith  shows  and  acts,  and  scien- 
tifically distinguish  true  Faith  from  false.  Re- 
ligion, like  all  else,  is  conscious  of  itself,  listens 
to  itself ;  it  becomes  less  and  less  creative,  vital ; 
more  and  more  mechanical.  Considered  as  a 
whole,  the  Christian  Religion  of  late  years  has 
been  continually  dissipating  itself  into  Metaphy- 
sics ;  and  threatens  now  to  disappear,  as  some 
rivers  do  in  deserts  of  barren  sand."  * 

The  preceding  words  have  already  suggested 
from  what  quarter  Carlyle's  position  with  reference 
to  Christianity  may  be  expected. 

We  shall  next  consider  his  position  as  to  the 
personality  of  Christ  and  the  historical  signifi- 
cance of  Christianity. 


Characteristics,  p.  20. 


46  THOMAS  CABLYLE. 

When  Goethe  on  the  llth  of  March,  1832 
(Eckerm,  iii.,  255)  gives  utterance  to  the  following 
sentiment :  "I  consider  the  Gospels  entirely  gen- 
nine,  for  there  is  in  them  an  image  of  a  powerful 
grandeur  which  proceeds  from  the  person  of 
Christ  and  in  so  godlike  a  manner  as  only  upon 
earth  the  Godlike  has  been  revealed.  If  one 
asks  me  whether  it  may  be  in  my  nature  to  feel 
reverence  and  devotion  to  him,  I  answer,  to  be 
sure.  I  bow  before  him  as  before  the  highest 
revelation,  the  highest  principle  of  morality,"  and 
when  on  the  same  day  he  says,  "may  spiritual 
culture  advance,  may  the  natural  sciences  grow 
broader  and  deeper,  and  the  human  spirit  expand 
as  it  will,  it  will  never  be  surpassed  by  the  grand- 
eur and  moral  development  of  Christianity  as  it 
glistens  and  sparkles  in  the  Gospels ; "  and  when 
Goethe  crowns  these  expressions  with  the  words, 
/  "  We  shall  all  of  us  come  gradually  out  of  a 
i  Christianity  of  words  and  belief  to  a  Christianity 
^*^J  of  prijiciple^  and  action,"  it  is  in  order  that  Car- 
lyle's  own  conviction  of  the  worth  and  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  future  of  Christianity  may  also 
find  expression.  Carlyle's  religious  feeling  be- 
came completely  imbued  with  the  teaching  and 
character  of  Christ. 

Carlyle  never  spoke  a  word  which  permitted  of 
a  double  meaning,  which  did  not  show  the  com- 


CAKLYLE'S  RELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.        47 

plete  conviction  of  his  heart,  and  in  the  following 
plain  language  he  expresses  his  belief  in  Christ : 
"Highest  of  all  Symbols  are  those  wherein  the 
Artist  or  Poet  has  risen  into  Prophet,  and  all  men 
can  recognise  a  present  God  and  worship  the 
same.  .  .  .  Various  enough  have  been  such 
religious  Symbols,  what  we  call  Religious ;  as  men 
stood  in  this  stage  of  culture  or  the  other,  and 
could  worse  or  better  body-forth  the  Godlike : 
some  Symbols  with  a  transient  intrinsic  worth ; 
many  with  only  an  extrinsic.  If  thou  ask  to  what 
height  man  has  carried  it  in  this  manner,  look 
on  one  divinest  Symbol :  on  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
and  his  Life,  and  his  Biography,  and  what  fol- 
lowed therefrom.  Higher  has  the  human  Thought 
not  yet  reached ;  This  is  Christianity  and  Christ- 
endom, a  Symbol  of  quite  perennial,  infinite 
character ;  whose  significance  wih1  ever  demand 
to  be  anew  inquired  into,  and  anew  made  mani- 
fest." * 

/"  Small  it  is  that  thou  canst  trample  the  Earth 
under  thy  feet,  as  old  Greek  Zeno  trained  thee : 
thou  canst  love  the  Earth  while  it  injures  thee, 
and  even  because  it  injures  thee ;  for  this  a 
Greater  than  Zeno  was  needed,  and  he,  too,  was 
sent.  Knowest  thou  that  '  Worship  of  Sorrow  ?  ' 

*  Sartor  Eesartus,  p.  155. 


48  THOMAS   CABLYLE. 

The  Temple  thereof,  founded  some  eighteen  cen- 
turies ago,  now  lies  in  ruins,  overgrown  with 
jungle,  the  habitation  of  doleful  creatures :  never- 
theless, venture  forward ;  in  a  low  crypt,  arched 
out  of  falling  fragments,  thou  findest  the  Altar 
still  there,  and  its  sacred  Lamp  perennially  burn- 
ing."* 

The  essence  of  the  Christian  doctrine  for  Car- 
lyle  is  raised  above  all  doubt  and  every  logical 
proof,  it  is  implanted  in  every  human  heart,  and 
whether  "in  the  believing  or  unbelieving  mind, 
must  ever  be  regarded  as  the  crowning  glory,  or 
rather  the  life  and  soul,  of  our  whole  modern 
culture ! "  t 

And  just  for  this  reason  Carlyle  never  became 
tired  of  pointing  out  the  untenableness  of  even 
the  most  earnest  essays  to  defend  or  assault  the 
Christian  doctrine  with  the  help  of  logic. 

In  his  Essay  on  Voltaire  we  find  these  words : 
"  That  the  Christian  Keligion  could  have  any 
deeper  foundation  than  Books,  could  possibly  be 
written  in  the  purest  nature  of  man,  in  mysteri- 
ous, ineffaceable  characters,  to  which  Books,  and 
all  Revelations  and  authentic  traditions,  were  but 
a  subsidiary  matter,  were  but  as  the  light  where- 
by that  divine  writing  was  to  be  read ; — nothing 


*  Sartor  Eesartus,  p.  133. 
t  Signs  of  the  Times,  p  242. 


CARLYLE'S  RELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.        49 

of  this  seems,  even  in  the  faintest  manner,  to 
have  occurred  to  Voltaire.  Yet,  herein,  as  we 
believe  that  the  whole  world  has  now  begun  to 
discover,  lies  the  real  essence  of  the  question; 
by  the  negative  or  affirmative  decision  of  which, 
the  Christian  Eeligion,  anything  that  is  worth 
calling  by  that  name,  must  fall,  or  endure  forever. 
We  believe,  also,  that  the  wiser  minds  of  our 
age  have  already  come  to  agreement  in  this  ques- 
tion ;  or  rather  never  were  divided  regarding  it. 
Christianity,  the  '  Worship  of  Sorrow,'  has  been 
recognised  as  divine,  on  far  other  grounds  than 
'Essays  on  Miracles,'  and  by  consideration  in- 
finitely deeper  than  would  avail  in  any  mere 
'  trial  by  jury.'  He  who  argues  against  it,  or  for 
it,  in  this  manner,  may  be  regarded  as  mistak- 
ing its  nature.  *  ....  Our  fathers  were 
wiser  than  we,  when  they  said,  in  the  deepest 
seriousness,  what  we  often  hear  in  shallow  mock- 
ery, that  Eeligion  is  '  not  of  Sense,  but  of  Faith ; ' 
not  of  Understanding,  but  of  Eeason.  He  who 
finds  himself  without  the  latter,  who  by  all  his 
studying  has  failed  to  unfold  it  in  himself,  may 
have  studied  to  great  or  little  purpose,  we  say 
not  which ;  but  of  the  Christian  Eeligion,  as  of 
many  other  things,  he  has  and  can  have  no 


*  Essay  on  Voltaire,  p.  172. 


50  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

knowledge.  The  Christian  Doctrine  we  often 
hear  likened  to  the  Greek  Philosophy,  and  found, 
on  all  hands,  some  measurable  way  superior  to 
it :  but  this  also  seems  a  mistake.  The  Christian 
Doctrine,  that  Doctrine  of  Humanity,  in  all  senses 
Godlike,  and  the  parent  of  all  Godlike  virtues, 
is  not  superior,  or  inferior,  or  equal,  to  any  doc- 
trine of  Socrates  or  Thales ;  being  of  a  totally 
different  nature  ;  differing  from  these,  as  a  per- 
fect Ideal  Poem  does  from  a  correct  Computation 
in  Arithmetic.  He  who  compares  it  with  such 
standards  may  lament  that,  beyond  the  mere  let- 
ter, the  purport  of  this  divine  Humility  has 
never  been  disclosed  to  him ;  that  the  loftiest 
feeling  hitherto  vouchsafed  to  mankind  is  yet 
hidden  from  his  eyes.  *  ....  We  under- 
stand ourselves  to  be  risking  no  new  assertion, 
but  simply  repeating  what  is  already  the  convic- 
tion of  the  greatest  of  our  age,  when  we  say, — 
that  cheerfully  recognising,  gratefully  appropri- 
ating whatever  Voltaire  has  proved,  or  any  other 
man  has  proved,  or  shall  prove,  the  Christian 
Religion,  once  here,  cannot  again  pass  away; 
that  in  one  or  the  other  form,  it  will  endure 
through  all  time ;  that  as  in  Scripture,  so  also 
in  the  heart  of  man,  is  written,  '  the  Gates  of  Hell 

*  Voltaire,  p.  173. 


CARLYLE'S  RELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.        51 

shall  not  prevail  against  it.'  Were  the  meaning 
of  this  Faith  never  so  obscured,  as,  indeed,  in 
all  times,  the  coarse  passions  and  perceptions 
of  the  world  do  all  but  obliterate  it  in  the  hearts 
of  most;  yet  in  every  pure  soul,  in  every  Poet 
and  Wise  Man,  it  finds  a  new  Missionary,  a  new 
Martyr,  till  the  great  volume  of  Universal  History 
is  finally  closed,  and  man's  destinies  are  fulfilled 
in  this  earth.  '  It  is  a  height  to  which  the  human 
species  were  fated  and  enabled  to  attain ;  and 
from  which,  having  once  retained  it,  they  can 
never  retrograde."  * 

These  views  of  the  historical  significance  of 
Christianity  are  almost  identical  with  Goethe's; 
but  as  to  the  nature  of  Christianity  itself,  the  two 
men  take  widely  divergent  paths. 

11  Christianity  as  '  the  religion  of  expiation ' 
has  two  poles,  between  which  all  Christian  life 
oscillates :  the  one,  negative,  is  the  consciousness 
of  sin,  or  of  a  contrast  between  God  and  man ; 
the  other,  the  positive  pole,  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  grace,  or  of  the  annulling  of  that  con- 
trast, of  the  reconcilement  of  the  disunited, 
and  the  reunion  of  God  and  man.  According 
to  the  diversity  in  natures,  the  attractive  power 
of  Christianity  rests  now  upon  the  side  of 

*  Essay  on  Voltaire,  pp.  172-174. 


52  THOMAS   CAELYLE. 

the  negative  and  now  upon  that  of  the  positive 
pole."  * 

If  we  apply  this  idea  to  Carlyle,  we  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  with  him,  exactly  as  with 
Kant,  Calvin,  Knox,  Cromwell,  and  all  other  men 
who  have  grown  up  under  the  influence  of  de- 
nned notions  of  the  Scotch  Presbyterian  Church, 
sympathy  is  found  to  be  more  on  the  side  of  the 
negative  pole — decidedly  in  contrast  to  Goethe. 

The  extent  of  the  preponderating  notions  as 
to  sinfulness  and  the  imperfectness  of  human 
nature  induced  Carlyle  to  take  this  position- 
perhaps  already  well  grounded  in  his  nature, 
at  all  events,  further  developed  by  education. 

Here  views  inherited  from  his  ancestors  sud- 
denly stand  out  in  rugged  contrast  to  the  Reli- 
gious Idealism  of  his  soul,  and  here  lies  darkly 
and  mysteriously  the  essence  of  the  contradic- 
tion of  his  religious  views  so  enigmatically  split 
asunder. 

Carlyle,  whom  we  even  now  hear  saying :  Man 
is  a  divine  mystery,  every  man  has  an  immortal 
soul  which  is  the  mirror  and  living  reflection 
of  God  ;  Carlyle,  whose  gentle  soul  fully  coincides 
with  the  belief  that  an  infinite  and  powerful  Good 

*  These  words,  taken  from  a  paper  of  Otto  Pfleiderer's  on 
"Goethe's  Conception  of  Religion,"  are  to  be  found  in  the 
"  Protsstantische  Kirchenzeitung, "  April  11,  1883. 


CARLYLE'S  RELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.        53 

exists,  a  God,  to  whom  every  man's  well  being 
and  perfection  lies  near,  who,  as  the  "  Omnipo- 
tent "  and  the  "  All-Good  "  is  able  to  find  ways 
and  means  to  advance  the  perfection  of  every 
man,  to  purify  every  man  ;  Carlyle,  when  he  steps 
forth  as  "  admonisher,"  and  tries  to  show  the 
absolute  necessity  of  the  morality  of  the  world 
with  fire  and  sword — as  he  has  himself  con- 
fessed— has  gone  hand  in  hand  with  Calvinism 
in  the  question  of  Predestination. 

And  though  this  conviction  as  to  the  possi- 
bility of  the  complete  damnation  of  mankind — 
in  the  Dantean  sense — did  not  cause  him  to  be- 
come a  pessimist  (what  the  logical  result  of  it 
would  have  been),  as  a  result  of  it,  his  religious 
views  were  always  tinged  with  a  sort  of  melan- 
choly, dejection  and  sadness  which  shows  a  pro- 
digious digression  from  Goethe's  religious  views. 
"  Keligion  contains  an  infinite  amount  of  sad- 
ness,"— this  sentence  of  Novalis'  comes  directly 
from  his  heart.  The  religion  of  sadness,  the  re- 
ligion of  suffering,  is  his  constantly  recurring 
definition  of  Christianity.  Goethe's  expression, 
"  the  sanctuary  of  pain  "  he  admitted  completely 
into  his  realm  of  ideas  and  quoted  it  repeatedly. 

To  be  sure,  we  often  find  in  his  Journal  such 
expressions  as  the  following :  "  I  say  to  myself, 
why  shouldst  thou  not  be  thankful  ?  God  is 


54  THOMAS  CAKLYLE. 

good,  all  this  life  is  a  heavenly  miracle,  great, 
though  stern  and  sad."  "  The  universe  is  full 
of  love,  but  also  of  inexorable  sternness  and 
severity,  and  it  remains  for  ever  true  that  God 
reigns." 

But  the  grim  sternness  and  the  inexorable  harsh- 
ness which  the  ever  insufficient  nature  of  man 
brings  with  it,  appears  always  like  a  ghost  be- 
tween him  and  God,  and  robs  him — at  least  at 
times — of  the  content  of  his  own  soul. 

"  I,  like  all  mortals,  have  to  feel  the  inexorable 
that  there  is  in  life,  and  to  say,  as  piously  as 
I  can  :  God's  will,  God's  wiU !  "  .  .  .  "  Sunt 
lacrimce  rerum  /  Fractus  bello,  fessus  annis"  he 
writes.  "  The  deepest  De  Profundis  was  trifling 
in  comparison  with  the  le^eling^ui  my  heart. 
There  is  nothing  but  wail  and  lamentation  in  the 
heart  of  all  my  thoughts."  "  I  am  very  wae  and 
lonely  here^he  writes  to  his  wife,  "take  care, 
take  care  of  thy  poor  little  selfpfor  truly  enough, 
I  have  no  other  !  "  "A  solemn  kind  of  sadness, 
a  gloom  of  mind  which,  though  heavy,  to  bear, 
is  not  unallied  with  sacredness  and  blessedness." 
"  There  is  nothing  of  joyful  in  my  life,  nor  ever 
likely  to  be ;  no  truly  loved  or  loving  soul — or 
practically  as  good  as  none — left  to  me  in  the 
earth  any  more.  The  one  object  that  is  wholly 
beautiful  and  noble,  and  in  any  sort  helpful  to 


CARLYLE'S  EELATION  TO  CHEISTIANITY.        55 

my  poor  heart,  is  she  whom  I  do  not  name.  The 
thought  of  her  is  drowned  in  sorrow  to  me,  but 
also  in  tenderness,  in  love  inexpressible."  * 

A  deep  insight  into  his  lif e  is  given  in  a  letter 
written  on  June  12,  1847,  to  the  excellent  Thomas 
Erskine,  of  Linlathen  :  "  One  is  warned  by  Nature 
herself  not  to  '  sit  down  by  the  side  of  sad  thoughts,' 
as  my  friend  Oliver  has  it,  and  dwell  voluntarily 
with  what  is  sorrowful  and  painful.  Yet  at  the 
same  time  one  has  to  say  for  one's  self — at  least 
I  have — that  all  the  good  I  ever  got,  came  to 
me  rather  in  the  shape  of  sorrow :  that  there  is 
nothing  noble  or  godlike  in  the  world  but  has 
in  it  something  of  '  infinite  sadness,'  very  differ- 
ent indeed  from  what  the  current  moral  philoso- 
phies represent  to  us."  t 

This  shows  the  seriousness,  the  sadness  and 
melancholy  with  which  his  whole  thought  is 
penetrated.  It  is  the  rebound  of  his  soul,  and 
of  the  infinite  suffering  with  which  his  life  is 
filled.  The  single  hidden  reason  for  all  this  ap- 
pears to  lie  in  ihe  much  too  tender  nature  of 
his  heart,  which  is  always  being  wounded,  even 
in  his  love  for  his  wife — and  furthermore  in 
the  peculiar  excitability  of  his  nature.  His  wife 

*  Journal,  Sep.  30,  1867. 

f  Fronde's  Life  of  Carlyle,  Franklin  Square  Ed.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  6. 


56  THOMAS   CABLYLE. 

was  once  taken  when  she  was  very  ill  to  the 
baths  at  St.  Leonards,  while  he  himself  was  re- 
turning to  his  work  in  London,  and  when  the 
sufferer  was  somewhat  better,  he  writes,  on  Sep- 
tember 29th,  1864,  in  answer  to  a  letter  from  her  : 

"  Oh,  my  suffering  little  Jeannie  !  Not  a  wink 
of  real  sleep  again  for  you.  I  read  (your  letter) 
with  that  kind  of  heart  you  may  suppose  in  the 
bright  beautiful  morning.  And  yet,  dearest,  there 
is  something  in  your  note  that  is  welcomer  to 
me  than  anything  I  have  yet  had — a  sound  of 
piety,  of  devout  humiliation  and  gentle  hope,  and 
submission  to  the  Highest,  which  affects  me  much 
and  has  been  a  great  comfort  for  me.  Yes,  poor 
darling !  This  was  wanted.  Proud  stoicism  you 
never  failed  in,  nor  do  I  want  you  to  abate  of 
it.  But  there  is  something  beyond  of  which  I  be- 
lieve you  have  had  too  little.  It  softens  the  angry 
heart  and  is  far  from  weakening  it — nay,  is  the 
final  strength  of  it,  the  fountain  and  nourish- 
ment of  all  real  strength.  Come  home  to  your 

own  poor  nest  again We  have  had 

a  great  deal  of  hard  travelling  together,  we  will 
not  break  down  yet,  please  God." 

This  letter  fits  completely  into  this  connection. 
It  shows  what  his  real  trouble  was ;  what  op- 
pressed him ;  what  made  him  unhappy ;  what 
filled  his  whole  life  with  gloom  and  sadness,  and 


CAKLYLE'S  KELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.        57 

what  a  sombre  veil  beclouded  his  religion.  All 
of  which,  however  beautiful  the  picture  that  pro- 
duces this  "  ascetic  pessimistic  "  aspect  of  Chris- 
tianity, actually  interfered  with  his  keeping  a 
strong  grasp  on  that  joyous,  sunny  height  of 
Goethe's  standpoint,  whose  "  preeminently  happy 
spirit,"  conscious  of  moral  greatness,  willingly  ad- 
mits "man's  hereditary  shortcomings,"  but  without 
laying  special  stress  upon  this,  and  being  com- 
pletely lifted  above  sorrow  and  sin,  soars  to  that 
"  sublime  view  of  the  world,"  where  satisfaction, 
in  the  bitterest  suffering  itself,  consists  in  "recog- 
nising God,"  no  matter  how  and  where  He  may 
reveal  himself.  That  is  the  actual  blessedness  on 
Earth. 

"  Were  not  the  eye  so  luminous, 
How  could  it  ever  see  the  sun  ? 
Lived  not  in  us  God's  influence, 
How  could  the  divine  delight  us  ?  "  * 

This  is  Goethe's  unflinching  belief  in  the  divine 
nature  of  man,  a  belief  which  could  never  in  any 
way  be  affected  by  the  gloomy  influence  of  the 
doctrine  of  predestination.  It  was  this  belief 
in  the  "  natural  holiness  of  human  nature  "  that 
separated  Goethe,  once  for  all,  frcm  the  followers 
of  the  Augustinian  doctrines,  Luther  himself  in- 

*  Goethe,  Spruche  in  Prosa,  p.  120.     Ed.  Leoper. 


58  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

eluded,  and  led  him  to  the  party  of  Pelagius.  It 
was  as  he  himself  called  it,  "  Christianity  for  his 
own  private  use."  * 

If  with  Goethe  this  free  and  joyous  contempla- 
tion of  life,  in  strong  contrast  to  the  gloomy  and 
untrue  teachings  of  the  extreme  insufficiency  of 
human  nature,  was  always  able  to  win  the  vic- 
tory, it  was — however  obstructed  by  gloomy  views — 
fundamentally  the  same  as  that  of  Carlyle. 

The  optimistic  and  religious  Idealism  took  pos- 

'  session  of  his  soul,  just  as  it  does  in  the  case 

of   every  healthy   man's,    and   it   was   constantly 

brought  home  to  him  that  "  the  gate  of  Hell  shall 

have  no  strength." 

He  cries  out :  "  The  Earth  is  not — in  the  name 
of  God — a  place  of  bitter  hopelessness  for  any 
living  creature,  but  it  is  emphatically  the  place  of 
hope  for  all."  t 

"  One  asks,  Is  man  alone  born  to  sorrow  that 
has  neither  healing  nor  blessedness  in  it?  All 
nature,  from  all  corners,  answers,  No — for  all 
the  wise,  No.  Only  Yea  for  the  unwise,  who 
have  man's  susceptibilities,  appetites,  capabilities, 
and  not  the  insights  and  rugged  virtues  of  men."  J 

"  Yes,  the  Redeemer  liveth.     He  is  no  Jew,  or 


*  Wahrheit  und  Dichturg,  (Hempel)  vol.  iii,  p.  178. 
f  Froude's  Life  of  Carlyle,  vol.  iii.,  p.  15. 
j  Op.  cit,  p.  42. 


CABLYLE'S  EELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.        59 

image  of  a  man,  or  surplice,  or  old  creed,  but 
the  Unnamable  Maker  of  us,  voiceless,  formless 
within  our  own  soul,  whose  voice  is  every  noble 
and  genuine  impulse  of  our  souls.  He  is  yet 
there,  in  us  and  around  us,  and  we  are  there. 
No  Eremite  or  fanatic  whatever  had  more  than 
we  have  ;  how  much  less  had  most  of  them  ?  " 

Carlyle's  Calvinistic  views  stand  not  altogether 
in  inexplicable  contradiction  to  this  sentiment. 
"What  induced  him  to  doubt  of  the  insufficiency 
of  human  nature — divine  as  it  is  and  should  be — 
what  led  him  to  a  complete  and  exaggerated 
contempt  for  the  world,  was  his  unrelenting  hate 
of  the  evil,  and  the  immoral  as  it  exists,  as  a 
rather  large  factor  in  the  world's  history.  This 
is  a  point  which  properly  belongs  to  the  Chapter 
on  Ethics,  but  must,  nevertheless,  be  discussed 
here,  where  he  defines  his  position  as  to  Predes- 
tination and  Christianity  in  general. 

The  moral  duty  imposed  upon  us  by  God, 
\  whose  fulfillment — as  Carlyle  has  already  said — 
is  our  divine  right,  will  only  be  recognized  by 
a  few,  and  performed  by  still  fewer.  Only  the 
soul  of  a  hero  can  perform  it — a  man  of  extra- 
ordinary greatness  and  mellowness — a  man  chosen 
by  God ;  average  humanity  deprives  itself  of  this 
heroism  ;  does  not  listen  to  the  voice  of  its  heart, 
which  is  the  command  of  God;  and  so  misses 


60  THOMAS  CABLYLE. 

its  divine  call.  And  as  the  noble  man  can  only 
hate  and  despise  what  is  worthless,  so  does  also 
the  righteous  God.  That  the  just  God  judges 
according  to  a  higher  law  than  that  of  human 
morality,  that  with  him  it  is  the  law  of  love 
which  judges,  finds  in  Carlyle  no  fixed  abode. 
"Where  the  question  is  one  of  the  practical  fur- 
therance of  morality,  Carlyle  conies  out  strongly 
as  "  admonisher."  Here — and  here  only — is 
Carlyle's  God  found.  The  Old  Testament  God, 
the  punishing  and  revengeful  God  is  his,  and  his 
religion  might  be  said  to  be  that  of  "  Job,  Isaiah 
and  Ezekiel."  His  bosom  is  filled  with  hatred 
and  revenge  toward  the  unworthy.  The  Christian 
doctrine  of  forgiveness  and  of  human  love  re- 
cedes, and  Hell  opens  her  gates  for  the  wicked 
who  have  devoted  themselves  voluntarily  to  des- 
truction, and  with  whom  God  and  Eternity  can 
have  nothing  in  common. 

At  this  point  Carlyle  returns  to  the  doctrines 
of  the  Church,  but  fails  to  reach  the  heights  which 
the  Christianity  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  embraced. 
Carlyle  forgets  the  words  : 

"  All  sins  shall  be  forgiven, 
And  Hell  shall  no  more  be. " 

One  can  see  from  these  views  of  the  justice 
of  the  punishing  God,  how  Carlyle  clung  to  the 
ascetic-pessimistic  aspect  of  Christianity;  how 


CARLYLE'S  RELATION  TO  CHRISTIANITY.        61 

it  was  that  the  idea  of  mercy  and  of  love — which, 
placed  above  everything  else,  even  justice  itself, 
and  finally  carrying  victory  with  it — was  always 
receding  with  him,  and  especially  when  it  comes 
to  the  point  of  inciting  to  morality  the  degener- 
ated elements  of  the  world. 

That  these  gloomy  views  do  not  play  an  im-  . 
portant  role  with  Carlyle ;  that  the  "  religion  of  S  0^ 
expiation,"  in  its  chief  significance  as  a  mercy 
bringer,  finds  an  explanation  in  him,  remains  in 
spite  of  everything,  a  determined  fact,  though  Car- 
lyle as  a  "  prophet "  and  preacher  (and  that  he 
considered  was  his  mission  in  life)  did  not  recog- 
nize the  " unrestricted "  free  and  "joyful  Godli- 
ness "  acknowledged  by  Goethe  as  the  final  goal. 
Carlyle  had  not  studied  in  the  school  of  antiquity 
as  had  Goethe.  For  his  own  inner  experience 
there  was  no  morality  which  had  not  been  won 
by  severe  battles ;  no  morality  which,  as  a  free 
gift  of  Nature,  is  given  to  man  in  his  cradle. 
Carlyle's  birth,  his  education,  his  whole  nature 
had  denied  him  •'  the  hopeful  and  happy  spirit  "- 
which,  however,  would  not  have  been  necessary 
to  assist  him  to  conquer  the  passionate  battles 
against  immorality.  That,  however,  the  "  Sinai's 
thunder  "  of  the  punishing  God  did  not  indicate 
his  latest  views  on  this  subject  cannot  be  too 
earnestly  emphasized. 


62  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

"  Can  thunder  from  all  the  thirty-two  azimuths, 
repeated  daily  for  centuries  of  years,  make  God's 
Laws  more  godlike  to  me  ?  Brother,  No.  Per- 
haps I  am  grown  to  be  a  man  now ;  and  do  not 
need  the  thunder  and  the  terror  any  longer !  Per- 
haps I  am  above  being  frightened ;  perhaps  it  is 
not  Fear,  but  Reverence  alone,  that  shall  now 
lead  me !  Revelations,  Inspirations  ?  Yes  ;  and 
thy  own  god-created  Soul ;  dost  thou  not  call 
\  that  a  '  revelation  ?  '  Who  made  Thee  f  "Where 
*  didst  Thou  come  from?  The  voice  of  Eternity, 
if  thou  be  not  a  blasphemer  and  poor  asphyxiated 
mute,  speaks  with  that  tongue  of  thine!  Thou 
art  the  latest  Birth  of  Nature  ;  it  is  *  the  Inspira- 
tion of  the  Almighty '  that  giveth  thee  understand- 
ing !  My  brother,  my  brother ! "  * 


*  Past  and  Present,  p.  198. 


CHAPTEK    IV. 

CARLYLEAND  THE  VARIOUS  PHASES 

OF  CHRISTIANITY:  THE  CHURCH 

AND  THEOLOGICAL  SCIENCE. 

MOTTO:  " Intolerance,  animosity  can  forward  no  cause,  and 
least  of  all  becomes  the  cause  of  moral  and  religious  truth.  A 
wise  man  has  well  reminded  us  '  that  in  any  controversy  the 
moment  we  feel  angry  we  have  already  ceased  striving  for  Truth, 
and  begun  striving  for  ourselves.'  " — Carlyle's  Essay  on  Vol- 
taire, p.  181. 

On  October  llth,  1841,  Carlyle  writer  to  the 
excellent  and  great  Scotch  divine,  Chalmers : 
"  that  you,  with  your  generous,  hopeful  heart, 
believe  that  there  may  still  exist  in  our  actual 
churches  enough  of  divine  fire  to  awaken  the 
supine  rich  and  the  degraded  poor,  and  act  vic- 
toriously against  such  a  mass  of  pressing  and 
ever-accumulating  evils — alas !  what  worse  could 
be  said  of  this  by  the  bitterest  opponent  of  it, 
than  that  it  is  a  noble  hoping  against  hope,  a 
noble  strenuous  determination  to  gather  from  the 


64  THOMAS   CABLYLE. 

dry  deciduous  tree  what  the  green  alone  could 
yield."  * 

Carlyle  was  not  a  bitter  enemy  to  "  the  church" 

as  he  has  frequently  been  represented  in  England. 

He  was  of  the  deepest  conviction  that  all  man- 

r^A    kind  belong  to  one  universal   divine   fellowship^ 

^which,  independent  of  churches,  ceremonies  and 

liturgies,  rests  only  and   solely  in   the   heart   of 

xVj  man.     He   was  an   enemy  to   falsehood   and  to 

!   hypocritical  intolerance ;   and   where,   indeed,   is 

this  more  to  be  found  in  the  world's  history  than 

in  priestcraft  ? 

His  relation  to  the  Church  again  is  not  essen- 
tially different  from  Goethe's. 

In  his  youth  he  attended  the  Scotch  Presby- 
terian Church,  but  later  in  life  his  experience 
was  similar  to  Goethe's.  The  mere  externali- 
ties of  the  Church,  its  accepted  dogmas  re- 
pelled him.  Carlyle  was  all  his  life  of  a  pious 
frame  of  mind,  and  was  able  to  enter  into  the 
feelings  of  the  pious  reverence  of  the  savage 
before  his  fetish,  and  of  the  heathen  before  his 
idol.  The  sight  of  a  fervently  praying  woman 
in  the  cathedral  at  Brugge  filled  him  with  melan- 
choly— "  a  more  beautiful  picture  than  all  the 
pictures  of  Rubens  and  Rembrandt."  He  could 

*  Life  of  Chalmers  (Hanna)  p.  109. 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  65 

thoroughly  understand  that  inner  need — what  it 
is  that  impels  a  devout  Catholic  to  long  for  the 
mediation  of  a  saint ;  but  all  forms  and  empty 
creeds,  or  creeds  whose  meaning  he — after  sin- 
cere trial — could  not  comprehend,  filled  him  with 
the  same  feeling  as  the  dull  belief  of  a  sceptic 
did — with  horror  and  compassion.  Like  Goethe,  he 
remained  true  to  the  Bible  during  his  whole  life : 
in  Craigenputtock  he  read  aloud  from  it  for  morn- 
ing prayers.  "  In  the  poorest  cottage,"  he  says 
in  1832,  "  is  one  Book,  wherein  for  several  thou- 
sands of  years,  the  spirit  of  man  has  found  light, 
and  nourishment,  and  an  interpreting  response 
to  whatever  is  Deepest  in  him ;  wherein  still,  to 
this  day,  for  the  eye  that  will  look  well,  the 
mystery  of  Existence  reflects  itself,  if  not  re- 
solved, yet  revealed,  and  prophetically  emblemed," 
and  again  in  1867  he  calls  the  Bible  "  the  truest 
of  all  books,"  *  as  earlier,  in  1850,  he  had  alluded 
to  it  as  "  the  most  earnest  of  books,"  t  and  it 
was  to  the  end  of  his  life — as  well  as  Goethe  and 
Shakespeare — his  faithful  companion.  :£  That  he 
recognized,  as  Goethe  did,  that  there  were  other 
revelations,  we  see  from  the  following : .  "  One 

*  Shooting  Niagara,  p.  221. 

f  Latter-Day  Pamphlets,  p.  274. 

|  Fronde's  Life  of  Carlyle,  vol.  iv.,  chap.  24. 


66  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

Bible  I  know,  of  whose  Plenary  Inspiration  doubt 
is  not  so  much  as  possible  ;  nay,  with  my  own 
eyes  I  saw  the  God's-Hand  writing  it ;  thereof 
all  other  Bibles  are  but  Leaves, — say,  in  Picture- 
Writing  to  assist  the  weaker  faculty."  * 

Goethe  writes  to  Lavater,  August  9th,  1782, 
"  You  consider  the  Gospel  as  it  stands  divine 
Truth.  A  distinct  voice  from  Heaven  would  not 
convince  me  that  water  burns  and  fire  quenches, 
that  birth  may  be  miraculous,  and  that  a  dead 
person  is  raised  to  life ;  far  more  do  I  consider 
all  this  blasphemy  against  the  great  God  and  his 
revelations  in  Nature.  You  find  nothing  more 
beautiful  than  the  Gospels ;  I  find  a  thousand 
written  pages  by  ancients  and  moderns  just  as 
beautiful  and  useful  and  indispensible  to  human- 
ity." 

These  words  describe  Carlyle's  position  per- 
fectly. "Art  thou  a  grown  baby,  then,  to  fancy 
that  the  miracle  lies  in  miles  of  distance,  or  in 
pounds  of  avoirdupois ;  and  not  to  see  that 
the  true  inexplicable  God-revealing  miracle  lies 
in  this,  that  I  can  stretch  forth  my  hand  at 
all ;  that  I  have  free  Force  t  :>  clutch  aught 
therewith  ?  "  t  Man'is  a  great  miracle,  sufficient- 


*  Sartor  Eesartus,  p.  134. 
fOp.  cit.,  p.  182. 


YAEIOUS   PHASES   OF  CHRISTIANITY.  67 

ly  inexplicable,  so  that  others  are  entirely  super- 
fluous. Things  were  regarded  by  many  men  as 
miracles  which  were  simply  incredible,  and  which 
could  not  be  supported  or  made  credible  by  logic 
or  "  metaphysical  hocus-pocus  "  or  "  theosophical 
moonshine." 

"When  such  ceremonies  as  baptism  throw  Goethe 
so  out  of  tune  that  he  cannot  be  present  at  them ; 
when  in  Meiningen  he  is  displeased  because  his 
residence  is  opposite  a  church,  and  he  writes  on 
May  12th,  1782,  to  Frau  von  Stein:  "  Here  I 
live  opposite  a  church,  which  is  a  terrible  situa- 
tion for  one  who  neither  prays  upon  this  or  that 
mountain,  and  has  no  prescribed  hours  to  wor- 
ship God ; "  and  when  Schiller  frankly  declares 
that  "no  sermon  precisely  pleases  him,"  it  is 
exactly  what  we  often  meet  with  in  Carlyle's  Jour- 
nal and  works. 

Nevertheless,  in  the  beginning  of  his  London 
life,  he  made  an  attempt  to  identify  himself  with 
some  church,  but  in  vain.  "  I  tried  various  chap- 
els ;  I  found  in  each  some  vulgar,  illiterate  man 
declaiming  about  matters  of  which  he  knew  noth- 
ing. I  tried  the  Church  of  England.  I  found 
there  a  decent  educated  gentleman  reading  out 
of  a  book  words  very  beautiful,  which  had  ex- 
pressed once  the  serious  thoughts  of  pious,  ad- 
mirable souls.  I  decidedly  preferred  the  Church 


68  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

of  England  man ;  but  I  had  to  say  to  him :  '  I 
perceive,  sir,  that  at  the  bottom  you  know  as  little 
about  the  matter  as  the  other  fellow.'  "  * 

"It  is  every  way  strange  to  consider,"  he  once 
wrote,  "what  Christianity,  so-called,  has  grown 
to  within  these  two  centuries — on  the  Howard 
and  Fry  side  as  on  every  other — a  paltry,  mealy- 
mouthed  '  religion  of  cowards/  which  also,  as  I 
believe,  awaits  its  *  abolition '  from  the  avenging 
power.  If  men  will  turn  away  their  faces  from 
God  and  set  up  idols,  temporary  phantasms,  in- 
stead of  the  Eternal  One — alas !  the  consequences 
are  from  of  old  well  known."  t 

Carlyle's  position  as  to  the  Church  on  the  one 
hand,  and  dogmatic  theological  science  on  the 
other,  finds  an  explanation  in  his  comprehension 
of  the  idea  of  God. 

When  Sterling  took  exception  to  Professor 
Teufelsdrockh's  God  because  it  appeared  to  be 
"  no  personal  God,"  Carlyle  replied :  "  A  grave 
charge,  nevertheless — an  awful  charge — to  which, 
if  I  mistake  not,  the  Professor,  laying  his  hand 
on  his  heart,  will  reply  with  some  gesture  ex- 
pressing the  solemnest  denial.  In  gesture  rather 
than  in  speech,  for  the  Highest  cannot  be  spoken 


*  Fronde's  Life  of  Carlyle,  vol.  iii.,  p.  10. 
f  Op.  cit.,  vol.  iv.,  p.  6. 


VARIOUS  PHASES   OF  CHRISTIANITY.  69 

in  words.  Personal !  Impersonal !  Me  !  Thou  ! 
What  meaning  can  any  mortal  (after  all)  attach 
to  them  in  reference  to  such  an  object  ?  Wer 
darf  Ihn  nennen  f  I  dare  not  and  do  not.  That 
you  dare  and  do  (to  some  greater  extent)  is  a 
matter  I  am  far  from  taking  offence  at.  Nay, 
with  all  sincerity,  I  can  rejoice  that  you  have 
a  creed  of  that  kind  which  gives  you  happy 
thoughts,  nerves  you  for  good  actions,  brings 
you  into  readier  communion  with  many  good 
men.  My  true  wish  is,  that  such  a  creed  may 
long  hold  compactly  together  in  you,  and  be  '  a 
covert  from  the  heat,  a  shelter  from  the  storm, 
as  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land.' 
Well  is  it,  if  we  have  a  printed  litany  to  pray 
from ;  and  yet  not  ill  if  we  can  pray  in  silence  ; 
for  silence,  too,  is  audible  there.  Finally,  assume 
yourself  that  I  am  neither  Pagan  nor  Turk,  nor 
circumcised  Jew,  but  an  unfortunate  Christian 
individual  resident  at  Chelsea  in  this  year  of 
grace,  neither  Pantheist,  nor  Pot-theist,  nor  any 
Theist  or  1st  whatsoever,  having  the  most  de- 
cided contempt  for  all  such  manner  of  system- 
builders  or  sect-founders — as  far  as  contempt 
may  be  compatible  with  so  mild  a  nature — feel- 
ing well  beforehand  (taught  by  long  experience) 
that  all  such  are  and  ever  must  be  wrong.  By 
God's  blessing,  one  has  got  two  eyes  to  look 


70  THOMAS   CAELYLE. 

with,  alco  a  mind  capable  of  knowing,  of  believ- 
ing. This  is  all  the  creed  I  will  at  this  time  in- 
sist on.  And  now  may  I  beg  one  thing,  that 
whenever  in  my  thoughts  or  your  own,  you  fall 
on  any  dogma  that  tends  to  estrange  you  from  me, 
pray  believe  that  to  be  false,  false  as  Beelzebub, 
till  you  get  clearer  evidence."  * 

The  preceding  words  clearly  show  the  bent  of 
Carlyle's  mind  towards  religious  matters.  As  he 
himself  was  continually  saying  with  severeness, 
"  creeds  the  recital  of  certain  ceremonies," 
"the  thirty-nine  articles,"  rituals  and  liturgies, 
hierarchies,  and  catechisms  have  nothing  whatever 
to  dc  with  the  nature  of  belief  itself,  with  religion 
itself,  for  '/religion  is  no  mere  external  append- 
age ; "  thoseHhings  are  only  the  outer  husk,  those 
same  church  clothes  "  have  gone  sorrowfully  out- 
at-elbows ; "  first  must  the  dead  letter  of  religion 
own  itself  dead,  if  the  living  spirit  of  religion  is 
to  arise  on  us,  "  newborn  of  Heaven."  t 

Religion  is  the  heavenly  light  which  slumbers 
[in  the  soul  of  man.  J  It  is  the  great,  heavenly 
divine  truth  which  has  been  left  to  us  as  a  joy,  a 
comfort,  and  a  protection  in  the  midst  of  the 


*  Froude's  Life  of  Carlyle,  vol.  iii.,  p.  10. 
f  Sartor  Resartus,  bk.  ii. ,  chap.  3. 
%  Latter-Day  Pamphlets,  p.  195. 


VARIOUS   PHASES   OF  CHRISTIANITY.  71 

changeful  cycles  of  the  world ;  it  is  an  eternal 
truth  which  we  can  never  question,  "  it  does  not 
consist  in  the  many  things  which  man  is  in  doubt 
of  and  tries  to  believe,  but  of  the  few  he  is  assured 
of,  and  has  no  need  of  effort  for  believing." 

Therefore  it  is  vain,  impossible,  and  for  the 
weak  mind  it  is  even  dangerous  and  injurious  to 
attempt  to  prove  the  necessity,  the  possibility  of 
religion  according  to  a  metaphysical  method;  it 
is  impossible,  because  religion  is  not  a  thing  of 
logical  or  mathematical  understanding,  but  of  the 
human,  feeling  heart,  of  living  belief.  "  An  amal- 
gam of  Christian  verities "  and  modern  critical 
philosophy  was  and  could  be  nothing  else  but 
"  poisonous  insincerity."  *  But  this  subject  is 
well  treated  in  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling. 

There  is  found  a  delicately  executed  picture  of 
the  earnest  and  true  endeavour  of  John  Sterling 
to  bring  theology  into  harmony  and  relation  with 
the  critical  philosophy  of  Kant — according  to 
Coleridge's  example — and  of  the  disastrous  effect 
of  this  endeavour  upon  a  true  and  frank  nature. 

"  No  man  of  Sterling's  veracity,  had  he  clearly 
consulted  his  own  heart,  or  had  his  own  heart 
been  capable  of  clearly  responding,  and  not  been 
dazzled  and  bewildered  by  transient  phantasies 


*  Fronde's  Life  of  Carlyle,  vol.  iii.,  chap.  2.    / 


72  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

and  theosophic  moonshine — could  have  under- 
taken this  function.  His  heart  would  have  an- 
swered :  '  No,  thou  canst  not.'  '  What  is  in- 
credible to  thee,  thou  shalt  not,  at  thy  soul's 
peril,  attempt  to  believe ! '  Else  whither  for  a 
refuge,  or  die  here.  Go  to  Perdition  if  thou 
must, — but  not  with  a  lie  in  thy  mouth ;  by 
the  Eternal  Maker,  no  !  "  * 

"  Concerning  this  attempt  of  Sterling's  to  find 
sanctuary  in  the  old  Church,  and  desperately 
grasp  the  hem  of  her  garment  in  such  manner, 
there  will  at  present  be  many  opinions  :  and  mine 
must  be  recorded  here  in  flat  reproval  of  it,  in 
mere  pitying  condemnation  of  it,  as  a  rash,  false, 

unwise   and  unpermitted   step Alas, 

if  we  did  remember  the  divine  and  awful  nature 
of  God's  Truth,  and  had  not  so  forgotten  it  as 
poor  doomed  creatures  never  did  before, — should 
we,  durst  we,  in  our  most  audacious  moments, 
think  of  wedding  it  to  the  world's  Untruth,  which 
is  also,  like  all  untruths,  the  Devil's?  Only  in 
in  the  world's  last  lethargy  can  such  things  be 
done,  and  accounted  safe  and  pious !  Fools ! 
'  Do  you  think  the  living  God  is  a  buzzard  idol/ 
sternly  asks  Milton,  '  that  you  dare  address  Him 
in  this  manner  ?  '  Such  darkness,  thick  sluggish 

*  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling,  chap.  2. 


VARIOUS  PHASES   OF  CHEISTIANITY.  73 

clouds  of  cowardice  and  oblivious  baseness,  have 
accumulated  on  us :  thickening  as  if  towards  the 
eternal  sleep !  It  is  not  now  known,  what  never 
needed  proof  or  statement  before,  that  Religion 
is  not  a  doubt ;  that  it  is  a  certainty, — or  else  a 
mockery  and  horror.  That  none  or  all  of  the 
many  things  we  are  in  doubt  about,  and  need  to 
have  demonstrated  and  rendered  probable,  can, 
by  any  alchymy  be  made  a  'Religion'  for  usj 
but  are  and  must  continue  a  baleful,  quiet  or 
unquiet  Hypocrisy  for  us;  and  bring — salvation, 
do  we  fancy  ?  I  think,  it  is  another  thing  they 
will  bring,  and  are  on  all  hands,  visibly  bringing^ 
this  good  while !  "  * 

In  the  same  text  is  found  Carlyle's  terrible  cas- 
tigatory  sermon  against  the  Jesuits : 

"  Man's  religion,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  a  dis- 
cerned fact,  and  coherent  system  of  discerned 
facts ;  he  stands  fronting  the  worlds  and  eterni- 
ties upon  it .  to  doubt  of  it  is  not  permissible  at 
all !  He  must  verify  or  expel  his  doubts,  convert 
them  into  certainty  of  Yes  or  No ;  or  they  will 
be  the  death  of  his  religion.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  convert  them  into  certainty  of  Yes  and  No ; 
or  even  of  Yes  though  No,  as  the  Ignatian  method 
is,  what  will  become  of  your  religion  ?  .  .  .  . 

*  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling,  Part  I.,  chap.  15. 


74  THOMAS   CAELYLE. 

The  religion  of  a  man  in  these  strange  circum- 
stances, what  living  conviction  he  has  about  his 
Destiny  in  this  Universe,  falls  into  a  most  strange 
condition  ; — and,  in  truth,  I  have  observed,  is 
apt  to  take  refuge  in  the  stomach  mainly.  The 
man  goes  through  his  prescribed  fugle -motions 
at  church  and  elsewhere,  keeping  his  conscience 
and  sense  of  decency  at  ease  thereby;  and  in 
some  empty  part  of  his  brain,  if  he  have  fancy 
left,  or  brain  other  than  a  beaver's,  there  goes 
on  occasionally  some  dance  of  dreamy  hypotheses, 
sentimental  echoes,  shadows,  and  other  inane 
make-believes, — which  I  think  are  quite  the  con-^ 
trary  of  a  possession  to  him ;  leading  to  no  clear 
Faith,  or  divine  life-and-death  Certainty  of  any 
kind ;  but  to  a  torpid  species  of  delirium  som- 
nians  and  delirium  stertens  rather.  In  his  head 
or  in  his  heart  this  man  has  of  available  religion 
none."  * 

The  Pig  Philosophy  is  the  result  of  such 
manoeuvring. 

If  Carlyle  ever  touches  upon  this  subject,  he 
takes  especial  pains  to  censure  Coleridge's  course, 
in  which  more  or  less  successful  and  excellent 
men,  such  as  Maurice,  Kingsley,  Hare  and  Ster- 
ling, have  sought  their  happiness ;  but  the  true 


*  Latter-Day  Pamphlets,  p.  267. 


VARIOUS  PHASES   OF  CHRISTIANITY.  75 

kernel,  Coleridge's  honest  effort,  he  by  no  means 
misconceived. 

"  Let  me  not  be  unjust  to  this  memorable  man," 
he  says.  "  Surely  there  was  here,  in  his  pious, 
ever-labouring,  subtle  mind,  a  precious  truth,  or 
prefigurement  of  truth ;  and  yet  a  fatal  delusion 
withal.  Prefigurement  that,  in  spite  of  beaver 
sciences  and  temporary  spiritual  hebetude  and 
cecity,  man  and  his  Universe  were  eternally  di- 
vine ;  and  that  no  past  nobleness,  or  revelation 
of  the  divine,  could  or  would  ever  be  lost  to  him. 
Most  true,  surely,  and  worthy  of  all  acceptance. 
Good  also  to  do  what  you  can  with  old  Churches 
and  practical  Symbols  of  the  Noble  :  nay,  quit 
not  the  burnt  ruins  of  them  while  you  find  there 
is  still  gold  to  be  dug  there.  But,  on  the  whole, 
do  not  think  you  can,  by  logical  alchymy,  distil 
astral  spirits  from  them;  or,  if  you  could,  that 
said  astral  spirits,  or  defunct  logical  phantasms, 
could  serve  you  in  anything.  What  the  light  of 
your  mind,  which  is  the  direct  inspiration  of  the 
Almighty,  pronounces  incredible, — that,  in  God's 
name,  leave  uncredited ;  at  your  peril  do  not  try' 
believing  that.  No  subtlest  hocus-pocus  of  '  rea- 
son '  versus  '  understanding '  will  avail  for  that 
feat, — and  it  is  terribly  perilous  to  try  it  in  these 
provinces ! "  * 


*  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling,  p.  53. 


76  THOMAS  CAELYLE. 

The  same  thought  is  expressed  in  a  letter  writ- 
ten to  Sterling  on  June  7th,  1837 : 

"  You  announce  that  you  are  rather  quitting 
philosophy  and  theology — I  predict  that  you  will 
quit  them  more  and  more.  I  give  it  you  as  my 
decided  prognosis  that  the  two  provinces  in  ques- 
tion are  become  theorem,  brain-web  and  shadow, 
wherein  no  earnest  soul  can  find  solidity  for  it- 
self. Shadow,  I  say ;  yet  the  shadow  projected 
from  an  everlasting  reality  that  is  within  our- 
selves. Quit  the  shadow.  Seek  the  reality." 


CHAPTEE  V. 
GOD. 

It  may  now  be  stated  in  a  very  few  words  what 
Carlyle  regarded  as  the  "  truth." 

No  "  new  religion  "  need  be  looked  for.     "  Sim- 
ple souls  still  clamour  occasionally  for  what  they 
XJall  a  'new  religion.'     My  friends,  you  will  not 
get  this  new  religion  of  yours; — I  perceive  you 
x  already  have  it,  always  had  it!     All  that  is  true] 
*  is  your   'religion,' — is  it  not?     Commanded  by  j    i 
the  Eternal  God  to  be  performed,  I  should  think,  ; 
if  it  is  true ! 

"Your  way  of  looking  at  life  has  been  at  all 
times  a  mirror  picture  of  mankind,  and  '  if  you 
have  now  no  Heaven  to  look  to ;  if  you  now 
sprawl,  lamed  and  lost,  sunk  to  the  chin  in  the 
pathless  sloughs  of  this  lower  world  without  guid- 
ance from  above,  know  that  the  fault  is  not 
Heaven's  at  all,  but  your  own  !  .  .  .  .  Arise, 
make  this  thing  more  divine,  and  that  thing,—, 
and  thyself,  of  all  things;  and  work,  and  sleep 


78  THOMAS   CAELYLE. 

not;  for  the  night  cometh,  wherein  no  man  can 
work!"* 

"  This  new  religion  is  no  pill  to  be  swallowed 
down — it  is  but  a  reawakening  of  thy  own  Self 
from  within."  t  It  must  exert  itself  to  obtain  a 
true  and  warm  belief  in  God  and  to  reach  moral 
activity.  This  new  religion  consists  in  the  re- 
conquered and  resucitated  religious  feeling  of  a 
change  of  heart.  Therein  lies  the  real  salvation 
of  the  world. 

"  The  Maker's  Laws,  whether  they  are  promul- 
gated in  Sinai  Thunder,  to  the  ear  or  imagina- 
tion, or  quite  otherwise  promulgated,  are  the 
Laws  of  God ;  transcendant,  everlasting,  impera- 
tively demanding  obedience  from  all  men.  The 
Universe  is  made  by  Law ;  the  great  Soul  of  the 
World  is  just  and  not  unjust.  Look  then,  if  thou 
have  eyes  or  soul  left,  into  this  shoreless  Incom- 
prehensible :  into  the  heart  of  its  tumultuous 
Appearances,  Embroilments,  and  mad  Time-Vor- 
texes, is  there  not,  silent,  eternal,  an  All-just,  an 
All-beautiful ;  sole  Reality  and  ultimate  control- 
ling power  of  the  whole?  This  is  not  a  figure 
of  speech;  this  is  a  fact.  The  fact  of  Gravita- 
tion, known  to  all  animals,  is  not  surer  than  this 


*  Latter-Day  Pamphlets,  p.  285. 
f  Past  and  Present,  p.  199. 


GOD.  79 

inner  Fact,  which  may  be  known  to  all  men.  He 
who  knows  this,  it  will  sink,  silent,  awful,  un- 
speakable into  his  heart.  He  will  say  with 
Faust :  '  Who  dare  name  Him  ?  '  Most  rituals  or 
'  namings '  he  will  fall  in  with  at  present,  are 
like  to  be  *  namings  ' — which  shall  be  nameless  \ 
In  silence,  in  the  Eternal  Temple,  let  him  wor- 
ship, if  there  be  no  fit  word.  Such  knowledge, 
the  crown  of  his  whole  spiritual  being,  the  life 
of  his  life*,  let  him  keep  and  sacredly  walk  by. 
He  has  a  religion.  Hourly  and  daily,  for  him- 
self and  for  the  whole  world,  a  faithful,  un- 
spoken, but  not  ineffectual  prayer  rises,  *  Thy 
will  be  done.'  His  whole  work  on  Earth  is  an 
emblematic  spoken  or  acted  prayer,  Be  the  will 
of  God  done  on  Earth, — not  the  Devil's  will, 
or  any  of  the  Devil's  servant's  wills !  He  has 
a  religion,  this  man ;  an  everlasting  Load-star 
that  beams  the  brighter  in  the  Heavens,  the 
darker  here  on  Earth  grows  the  night  around 
him."  * 

To  perform  God's  will,  to  live  a  pious  life,  that 
is  Caiiyle's  simple  doctrine — whether  the  heart 
feels  happy  in  it  or  not,  is  not  taken  into  con- 
sideration at  all :  man  must  keep  God's  com- 
mandments, must  be  moral.  And  only  so  far  as 


*  Carlyle's  Past  and  Present,  p.  197. 


80  THOMAS  CAELYLE. 

Christianity  teaches  this,  only  so  far  as  the  Chris- 
tian is  the  most  perfect  ideal  of  a  "  moral  Re- 
ligion," does  Carlyle  feel  respect  for  it.  He  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  "  forms,  rituals, 
creeds  and  ceremonies,"  as  he  himself  always 
says.  To  use  Fichte's  words  :  "  his  religious  ideas 
are  not  concerned  with  imputing  qualities  to 
God  which  are  acknowledged,  or  should  be  ac- 
knowledged, as  having  no  reference  to  our  moral 
destiny.'* 


CHAPTEB  VI. 

CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCI- 
ENCE,   AND   ESPECIALLY   TO- 
WARD PHILOSOPHY. 

C'est  d'  Allemagne  que  Carlyle  a  tire"  ses  plus  grand  id£es. 

H  y  a  6tudi6 De  1780  a  1830  1' Allemagne  a  produit 

toutes  les  id6es  de  notre  age  historique,  et  pendant  un  demi — 
stecle  encore,  pendant  un  stecle  pent-etre,  notre  grandes  affaire 
sera  deles  repenser.— Taine,  Ide~alisme  Anglais  p.  72;  also  in 
his  Lit.  Hist.,  5,  4,  §2  1,  p.  658.  [English  Translation.] 

An  irreverent  knowledge  is  no  knowledge. — Carlyle's  Essay 
on  Chartism,  p.  178. 

From  Carlyle's  deepest  conviction  that  the — 
unconsciously  living — religious  feeling  of  vener- 
ation for  the  divine  which  is  everywhere  present, 
not  only  satisfies  the  highest  moral  needs,  but 
actually  constitutes  the  only  highest  development 
of  mankind — is  shown  his  attitude  towards  science 
in  general,  and  philosophy  in  particular. 

If  the  "  philosophical-scientific  tendency "  of 
the  times  (as  Fichte  expresses  it)  is  inclined 
"  to  grant  nothing  but  what  is  comprehensible," 
and  nothing  but  what  the  "  carpenter's  rule  "  can 
establish;  if  merely  sensuous  empiricism  relies 


82  THOMAS  CAKLYLE. 

on  Science  whose  foundations  are  merely  based 
upon  logical  conclusions  and  deductions ;  if  it 
attempts  to  ignore  or  suppress  the  incomprehen- 
sible, the  mysterious,  the  transcendental  and  the 
metaphysical  which  represents  the  element  of 
religion ;  *  or  if  it  shows  it  to  be  absurd  fanati- 
cism or  mysticism,  with  such  a  state  of  things 
which  Carlyle  finds  too  widely  spread  throughout 
the  whole  of  English  and  French  philosophy  up 
to  his  own  time,  he  has  absolutely  no  sympathy. 

But  he  joyfully  recognized  the  results  and 
ideals  of  the  "  real "  philosophy  which  he  be- 
lieved was  found  in  the  efforts  of  the  German 
thinkers — whose  early  dawn  for  England  he  saw 
coming  from  Dugald  Steward. 

According  to  Carlyle's  conviction,  an  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  philosophy  and  its 
problems  was  first  made  possible  in  Germany  by 
the  critical  philosophy  of  Kant ;  its  problems 
which  (according  to  Carlyle's  comprehension),  in 
order  that  the  inner  eye  of  truth  might  be  opened, 
rested  upon  an  indubitable  principle,  and  the 
acceptance  of  "the  absolutely  and  primitively 
True  ;  "  t  rested  upon  the  "  primitively  True  " 
which,  as  the  beginning  cf  all  philosophy,  is 

*  Fichte,  7,  241. 

f  Essay,  State  of  General  Literature. 


CAKLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.       83 

written  in  the  soul  of  man ;  rested  upon  that 
truth  which  can  never  be  uttered  by  philosophy 
alone,  whose  existence  philosophy  herself  will 
never  be  able  to  prove,  even  with  the  help  of  logic 
and  science. 

Carlyle  awards  to  philosophy  only  a  limited 
province  :  he  regards  it  only  as  a  high  and  noble 
means  to  a  higher  and  nobler  end  ;  to  that  higher 
end  which  increases  the  view  that  "  the  belief  in 
Religion "  for  all  men,  as  well  as  for  thinkers 
and  philosophers,  is  the  greatest  gift  that  can 
be  bestowed — a  gift  which  (according  to  his  no- 
tion) is  even  again  only  a  means  to  an  end — that 
of  some  living  achievement. 

To  have  raised  this  idea  to  a  scientific  fact  wras 
the  service  which  the  Germans — in  his  eyes — 
had  rendered  to  mankind,  and  his  attitude  toward 
philosophy  is  found  everywhere  in  his  judgments 
of  the  several  directions  which  the  history  of 
philosophy  has  taken. 

''  In  most  of  the  European  nations  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  Science  of  Mind ;  only  more  or 
less  advancement  in  the  general  sciences  or  the 

special  sciences  of  matter So  it  is 

in  France  and  in  England,  only  the  Germans 
have  made  any  decisive  effort  in  *  psychological 
science ; '  the  science  of  the  age,  in  short,  is 
physical,  chemical,  physiological ;  in  all  shapes 


84  THOMAS  CAKLYLE. 

mechanical.  Our  favourite  mathematics,  the  high- 
ly prized  exponent  of  all  these  sciences,  has  also 
become  more  and  more  mechanical.  Excellence 
in  the  higher  branches  of  mathematics  depends 
less  on  the  natural  genius  than  on  acquired  ex- 
pertness  in  wielding  its  machinery.  Without  un- 
dervaluing the  wonderful  results  which  a  Le- 
grange  or  a  Laplace  educes  by  means  of  it,  we 
may  remark,  that  their  calculus,  differential  and 
integral,  is  little  else  than  a  more  cunningly  con- 
structed arithmetical  mill ;  when  the  factors  being 
put  in,  are,  as  it  were,  ground  into  the  true 
product,  under  cover,  and  without  other  effort  on 
our  part  than  a  steady  turning  of  the  handles. 
"We  have  more  Mathematics  than  ever ;  but  less 
Mathesis.  Archimedes  and  Plato  could  not  have 
read  the  Mechanique  Celeste  ;  but  neither  would 
the  whole  French  Institute  see  aught  in  the  say- 
ing, '  God  geometrises  ! '  but  a  sentimental  rodo- 
montrade." 

Since  Locke's  time  our  whole  metaphysics  has 
not  been  spiritual,  but  physical  and  material. 
The  unusual  respect  with  which  his  Essay  has 
always  been  held  (a  respect  founded  upon  the 
excellent  character  of  the  man),  is  an  extraordi- 
nary sign  of  the  times.  Its  whole  teaching,  in 

*  Signs  of  the  Times,  pp.  236-237. 


CAKLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.        85 

its  methods  and  its  results,  is  mechanical  accord- 
ing to  its  aim  and  origin.  It  is  no  philosophy  of 
the  mind,  only  an  examination  of  the  origin  of 
consciousness,  of  our  ideas — or,  as  we  might  say, 
a  history  of  their  origin  ;  what  we  may  be  able 
to  see  with  the  mind  and  in  the  mind ;  of  the 
great  mystery  of  our  moral  obligation  and  of 
our  moral  freedom  ;  that  restricted  or  unrestricted 
dependence  of  matter  on  mind ;  our  mysterious 
conceptions  of  Time  and  Space  ;  of  God  and  the 
Universe  never  once  are  touched  upon  in  all 
these  examinations,  and  do  not  appear  to  have 
the  least  connection  with  the  purport  of  the 
Essay. 

The  earliest  form  of  Scotch  metaphysics  had 
an  indistinct  conception  that  this  was  false,  but 
they  did  not,  however,  attempt  to  correct  it. 
Reid's  school  had  from  the  start  taken  a  mechan- 
ical trend,  as  no  other  seemed  to  appear  to  them ; 
the  wonderful  conclusions  which  Hume  reached — 
starting  from  facts  which  had  been  accepted  by 
Reid's  School  wrere  founded  by  this  same  Scotch 
School.  They  let  "  instinct "  loose,  like  a  mas- 
tiff, in  order  to  render  their  own  position  secure 
from  the  adversaries.  They  pull  themselves 
merrily  along — by  the  logical  chains  which  Hume 
threw  out  to  them  and  to  the  whole  world — into 
the  boundless  abysses  of  Atheism  and  Fatalism. 


86  THOMAS    CAELYLE. 

But  in  some  way  the  chain  broke  between  them, 
and  the  end  of  the  whole  matter  was  that  neither 
one  grieved  for  the  other — even  as  little  as  for 
the  contemporary  philosophical  movement  in  Eng- 
land which  was  kept  together  by  such  men  as 
Hartley,  Darwin  and  Priestley.  Hartley's  "vibra- 
tions" and  "  vibratiuncles "  were,  one  could  easily 
believe,  mechanical  and  material  enough,  but  our 
neighbours  on  the  Continent  could  go  still  farther. 

One  of  her  philosophers  has  made  the  extra- 
ordinary discovery  that  as  the  liver  produces  bile 
so  the  brain  secretes  thoughts ;  an  astounding 
fact  this,  which  Dr.  Cabanis  recently  in  his  Rap- 
ports da  Physique  et  du  JHoral  de  rhomme  has 
followed  to  its  extreme  ends.  The  metaphysics 
of  this  searcher  is,  nevertheless,  not  shadowless 
and  unsubstantial !  With  his  operating  knife 
and  his  "  psychological  sounding  leads  "  he  dis- 
sects the  whole  ethical  structure  of  mankind,  and 
then  offers  it  to  the  thinking  judgment  of  the 
world  under  a  microscope,  blowing  it  loud  through 
his  anatomical  tube.  Thought — he  admits — is 
still  secreted  in  the  brain  ;  but  then,  to  be  sure, 
one  could  consistently  conclude — an  interesting 
fact — that  poetry  and  religion  are  both  "  product 
of  the  smaller  intestines  !  " 

We  cherish  the  greatest  admiration  for  this 
learned  man ;  with  what  scientific  Stoicism  does  he 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.        87 

not  stride  through  the  world  of  miracles  without 
being  amazed ;  like  a  philosopher  through  an  enor- 
mous Yauxhall,  whose  fireworks  and  water-falls 
and  dashing  music  is  the  joy  and  delight  of  the 
crowd,  but  for  him  nothing  more  than  "  saltpetre, 
pasteboard  and  catgut."  * 

We  conclude  here  Carlyle's  animadversions  on 
the  mechanical  aspects  of  English  and  French 
philosophers,  and  turn  our  attention  to  his  judg- 
ment of  those  philosophies — especially  the  Ger- 
man critical  philosophy — which  makes  an  end 
of  "  perversion  of  all  philosophies." 

"  The  Kantist,  in  direct  contradiction  to  Locke 
and  all  his  followers,  both  of  the  French  and 
English  or  Scotch  Schools,  commences  from  with- 
in, and  proceeds  outwards  ;  instead  of  commenc- 
ing from  without,  and,  with  various  precautions 
and  hesitations,  endeavouring  to  proceed  inwards. 
The  ultimate  aim  of  all  Philosophy  must  be  to 
interpret  appearances, — from  the  given  symbol 
to  ascertain  the  thing.  Now  the  first  step  to- 
wards this,  the  aim  of  what  may  be  called  Pri- 
mary or  Critical  Philosophy,  must  be  to  find 
some  indubitable  principle  ;  to  fix  ourselves  on 
some  unchangeable  basis  ;  to  discover  what  the 
Germans  call  the  Urwahr,  the  Primitive  Truth, 

*  Essays,  vol.  ii.,  p,  238. 


88  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

the  necessarily,  absolutely  and  eternally  True. 
This  necessarily  True,  this  absolute  basis  of 
Truth,  Locke  silently,  and  Reid  and  his  followers 
with  more  tumult,  find  in  a  certain  modified  Ex- 
perience, and  evidence  of  Sense,  in  the  universal 
and  natural  persuasion  of  all  men.  Not  so  the 
Germans  :  they  deny  that  there  is  here  any  ab- 
solute Truth,  or  that  any  Philosophy  whatever 
can  be  built  on  such  a  basis  ;  nay,  they  go  to 
the  length  of  asserting,  that  such  an  appeal  even 
to  the  universal  persuasions  of  mankind,  gather 
them  with  what  precautions  you  may,  amounts 
to  a  total  abdication  of  Philosophy,  strictly  so 
called,  and  renders  not  only  its  farther  progress, 
but  its  very  existence,  impossible.  What,  they 
would  say,  have  the  persuasions,  or  instinctive 
beliefs,  or  whatever  they  are  called,  of  men,  to 
do  in  this  matter  ?  Is  it  not  the  object  of 
Philosophy  to  enlighten,  and  rectify,  and  many 
times  directly  contradict  these  very  beliefs.  .  .  . 
The  Germans  take  up  this  matter  differently, 
and  would  assail  Hume,  not  in  his  outworks, 
but  in  the  centre  of  his  citadel.  They  deny  his 
first  principle,  that  Sense  is  the  only  inlet  of 
Knowledge,  that  Experience  is  the  primary  ground 
of  Belief.  Their  Primitive  Truth,  however,  they 
seek,  not  historically  and  by  experiment,  in  the 
univeral  persuasions  of  men,  but  by  intuition, 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.        89 

in  the  deepest  and  purest  nature  of  Man.  In- 
stead of  attempting,  which  they  consider  vain, 
to  prove  the  existence  of  God,  Virtue,  an  im- 
material Soul,  by  inferences  drawn,  as  the  con- 
clusion of  all  Philosophy,  from  the  world  of 
Sense,  they  find  these  things  written  as  the  be- 
ginning of  all  Philosophy,  in  obscured  but  in- 
effaceable characters,  within  our  inmost  being; 
and  themselves  first  affording  any  certainty  and 
clear  meaning  to  that  very  world  of  Sense,  by 
which  we  endeavour  to  demonstrate  them. 

"  God  is,  nay,  alone  is,  for  with  like  emphasis 
we  cannot  say  that  anything  else  is.  This  is  the 
Absolute,  the  Primitively  True,  which  the  philo- 
sopher seeks.  Endeavouring,  by  logical  argu- 
ment, to  prove  the  existence  of  God,  a  Kantist 
might  say,  would  be  taking  out  a  candle  to  look 
for  the  sun ;  nay,  gaze  steadily  into  your  candle- 
light, and  the  sun  himself  may  be  invisible.  To 
open  the  inward  eye  to  the  sight  of  this  Prim- 
itively True ;  or  rather  we  might  call  it,  to  clear 
off  the  Obscurations  of  Sense,  which  eclipse  this 
truth  within  us,  so  that  we  may  see  it,  and  be- 
lieve it  not  only  to  be  true,  but  the  foundation 
and  essence  of  all  other  truth, — may,  in  such 
language  as  we  are  here  using,  be  said  to  be  the 
problem  of  Critical  Philosophy."  * 

*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  The  State  of  German  Literature,  pp.  67-69. 


90  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

"In  this  point  of  view,  Kant's  system  may  be 
thought  to  have  a  remote  affinity  to  those  of 
Malebranche  and  Descartes.  But  if  they  in  some 
measure  agree  as  to  their  aim,  there  is  the  widest 
difference  as  to  the  means.  We  state  what  to 
ourselves  has  long  appeared  the  grand  charac- 
teristic of  Kant's  Philosophy,  when  we  mention 
his  distinction,  seldom  perhaps  expressed  so 
broadly,  but  uniformly  implied,  between  Under- 
standing and  Eeason  ( Verstand  and  Vernunft}. 
To  the  Kantists,  Understanding  and  Eeason  are 
organs,  or  rather,  we  should  say,  modes  of  oper- 
ation, by  which  the  mind  discovers  Truth;  but 
they  think  that  their  manner  of  proceeding 
is  essentially  different;  that  their  provinces  are 
separable  and  distinguishable ;  nay,  that  it  is  of 
the  last  importance  to  separate  and  distinguish 
them.  Reason,  the  Kantists  say,  is  of  a  higher 
nature  than  Understanding;  it  works  by  more 
subtle  methods,  or  higher  objects,  and  requires 
a  far  finer  culture  for  its  development;  indeed, 
in  many  men  it  is  never  developed  at  all :  but 
its  results  are  no  less  certain,  nay,  rather  they 
are  much  more  so ;  for  Eeason  discerns  Truth 
itself,  the  absolutely  and  primitively  True ;  while 
the  Understanding  discerns  only  relations,  and 
cannot  decide  without  if.  The  proper  province 
of  Understanding  is  all,  strictly  speaking,  real, 


CAKLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWABD  SCIENCE.        91 

practical  and  material  knowledge, — Mathematics, 
Physics,  Political  Economy — the  adaptation  of 
means  to  ends  in  the  whole  business  of  life.  In 
this  province  it  is  the  indispensable  servant, 
without  which,  indeed,  existence  itself  would  be 
impossible.  Let  it  not  step  beyond  this  province, 
however;  not  usurp  the  province  of  Beason, 
which  it  is  appointed  to  obey,  and  cannot  rule 
over  without  ruin  to  the  whole  spiritual  man. 
Should  Understanding  attempt  to  prove  the  ex- 
istence of  God,  it  ends,  if  thorough-going  and 
consistent  with  itself,  in  Atheism,  or  a  faint  pos- 
sible Theism,  which  scarcely  differs  from  this: 
should  it  speculate  of  Virtue,  it  ends  in  Utility, 
making  Prudence  and  a  sufficiently  cunning  love 
of  Self  the  highest  good.  Consult  Understanding 
about  the  Beauty  of  Poetry,  and  it  asks,  Where 
is  this  Beauty?  or  discovers  it  at  length  in 
rhythms  and  fitnesses,  and  male  and  female 
rhymes.  Witness  also  its  everlasting  paradoxes 
on  Necessity  and  the  Freedom  of  the  Will ;  its 
ominous  silence  on  the  end  and  meaning  of  man ; 
and  the  enigma  which,  under  such  inspection, 
the  whole  purport  of  existence  becomes."  ' 

Carlyle's  chief  interest  in  the  efforts   and  re- 
sults  of  the   Kantean   Philosophy  in  particular, 

*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  the  State  of  German  Literature,  p.  67-70. 


92  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

and  of  German  Idealism  in  general,  concerns  it- 
self less — as  a  consequence  of  the  whole  tendency 
of  his  religions  views — with  the  "  theories  of  per- 
ceptions "  than  with  ethical  and  religious  doc- 
trines. 

We  do  not  wish  to  say  anything  of  these  views 
which  this  philosophy  reveals  of  the  course  and 
development  of  the  natural  sciences,  but  we  can- 
not refrain  from  stating  that  for  those  who  fol- 
low it,  its  effects  upon  Ethics  and  Religion  are 
incalculable. 

"  The  Critical  Philosophy  has  been  regarded 
as  the  greatest  intellectual  achievement  of  the 
century  in  which  it  came  to  light.  August  Wil- 
helm  Schlegel,  whose  opinion  has  a  known  value 
for  the  English,  has  stated  in  plain  terms  his 
belief,  that  in  respect  of  its  probable  influence 
on  the  moral  culture  of  Europe,  it  stands  on  a 

line  with  the  Reformation The  noble 

system  of  morality,  the  purer  theology,  the  lofty 
views  of  man's  nature  derived  from  it,  nay,  per- 
haps the  very  discussion  of  such  matters,  to  which 
it  gave  so  strong  an  impetus,  have  told  with  re- 
markable and  beneficial  influence  on  the  whole 
spiritual  character  of  Germany.  No  writer  of  any 
importance  in  that  country,  be  he  acquainted  or 
not  with  the  Critical  Philosophy,  but  breathes  a 
spirit  of  devoutness  and  elevation  more  or  less 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.       93 

directly  drawn  from  it.  Such  men  as  Goethe  and 
Schiller  cannot  exist  without  effect  in  any  liter- 
ature or  in  any  century :  but  if  one  circumstance 
more  than  another  has  contributed  to  forward 
their  endeavours,  and  introduce  that  higher  tone 
into  the  literature  of  Germany,  it  has  been  this 
philosophical  system ;  to  which,  in  wisely  believ- 
ing its  results,  or  even  in  wisely  denying  them, 
aU  that  was  lofty  and  pure  in  the  genius  of  poetry, 
or  the  reason  of  man,  so  readily  allied  itself.  "  * 

Thus  Carlyle  attaches  the  very  highest  impor- 
tance to  the  Kantean  Philosophy.  It  is  now 
only  necessary  to  show  that,  in  his  eyes,  Kant's 
great  successors  have  no  really  striking  differ- 
ences. The  only  thing  which  in  the  systems  of 
Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel,  Carlyle  considered 
great  and  remarkable  was  the  Idealism  inter- 
woven in  them  all ;  in  other  respects  he  charac- 
terized them  simply  as  "  these  Kantean  systems." 

He  was  rather  more,  however,  attached  to 
Fichte,  whose  manly  bearing  filled  him  with  the 
greatest  reverence,  than  to  any  of  the  other 
philosophers. 

"  The  cold,  colossal,  adamantine  spirit,  stand- 
ing erect  and  clear,  like  a  Cato  Major  among 
degenerate  men ;  fit  to  have  been  the  teacher  of 

*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  the  State  of  German  Literature,  p.  66. 


94  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

the  Stoa,  and  to  have  discoursed  of  Beauty  and 
Virtue   in    the    groves    of   Academe !      We   state 
Fichte's  character,  as  it  is  known    and   admitted 
by  men  of  all  parties  among  the  Germans,  when 
we  say  that  so  robust  an  intellect,  a  soul  so  calm, 
so  lofty,  massive  and  immovable,  has  not  mingled 
in    philosophical    discussion    since    the    time   of 
Luther.     We  figure  his  motionless  look,  had  he 
heard  the  charge  of  mysticism  which  was  made 
against  him  in  England.     For  the  man  rises  be- 
fore  us,  amid   contradiction   and   debate,  like   a 
granito  mountain  amid  clouds   and  wind.     Kidi- 
cule,  of  the  best  that  could  be  commanded,  has 
been  already  tried  against  him  ;  but  it  could  not 
avail.      What  was  the  wit  of  a  thousand  wits  to 
him  ?     The  cry  of  a  thousand  choughs  assaulting 
that  old  cliff  of  granite :  seen  from  the  summit, 
these,   as   they  winged   the   midway  air,  showed 
scarce  so  gross  as  beetles,  and  their  cry  was  sel- 
dom even  audible.     Fichte's  opinions  may  be  true 
or  false  ;  but  his  character,  as  a  thinker,  can  be 
slightly  valued  only  by  such  as  know  it  ill ;  and 
as  a  man,  approved   by  action  and  suffering,  in 
his  life  and  in  his  death,  he  ranks  with  a  class 
of  men  who  were   common   only  in  better   ages 
than  ours."* 

*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  the  State  of  German  Literature,  pp.  65-66. 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.       95 

Carlyle's  aspirations  were  akin  to  Fichte's, 
and  as  their  spiritual  development  was  similar, 
Fichte  must  have  attracted  Carlyle,  and  uncon- 
sciously exerted  a  great  influence  on  him. 

We  should  be  going  too  far  if  we  attempted  to 
trace  back  to  Fichte  certain  peculiarities  of  Car- 
lyle's phraseology,  and  many  of  his  important 
utterances  (this  was  actually  done  in  several  in- 
stances by  Novalis'  instrumentality),  but  it  is 
nevertheless  worthy  of  remark  that  Carlyle's 
"  Natural  Supernaturalism "  bears  the  strongest 
resemblance  to  Fichte's  idealism. 

Similar  to  Fichte,  his  doctrine — founded  upon 
the  "  Divine  Idea  of  the  wrorld  which  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  Appearances  "  reached  its  climax  in  the 
Ethical  and  the  Religious. 

And  when  Fichte  says  :  "  After  all,  this  accord- 
ing to  my  doctrine,  is  the  true  character  of  the 
truly  religious  man.  There  is  but  one  desire  that 
swells  his  breast  and  inspires  his  mind — the  hap- 
piness of  all  soul-inspired  creatures.  Thy  king- 
dom come !  is  his  prayer ;  besides  this  nothing 
has  the  least  charm  for  him,  He  has  become  in- 
sensible to  the  possibility  of  longing  for  anything 
else.  He  recognizes  but  one  way  of  furthering 
this  ideal,  that  of  following  the  voice  of  his  con- 
science in  all  his  actions,  unwaveringly,  without 
fear  or  sophistry.  This  links  him  again  to  the 


96  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

world,  not  as  an  object  of  enjoyment,  but  as  a 
sphere  for  conscientious  living  pointed  out  by  his 
inner  voice  ;  "  if  Fichte  advances  this  as  his  ideal 
of  a  morally  religious  man — an  ideal,  however, 
which  may  be  applied  to  any  man — we  do  not 
see  how  Carlyle's  ideal  could  be  better  formulated. 

The  significance  of  Schelling's  and  Hegel's 
systems  for  Carlyle  retreats  to  the  background. 
Schelling's  philosophy  had  fascinated  him,  to  be 
sure,  in  those  days  of  bitter  doubt,  when  he  was 
trying  to  formulate  his  own  ideas  of  life.  In  his 
Journal  and  Letters  we  occasionally  meet  with 
his  name,  but  Carlyle's  opinion  in  regard  to  him 
is  generally  expressed  too  vaguely  for  us  to  say 
that  Schelling  had  any  permanent  influence  upon 
his  mind.  He  said  once  about  him :  "  He  is  a 
man  evidently  of  deep  insight  into  individual 
things ;  speaks  wisely  and  reasons  with  the  nicest 
accuracy  on  all  matters  where  we  understand 
his  data."  * 

In  England,  Schelling's  influence  was  much 
more  important  on  Coleridge  and  his  followers 
than  on  Carlyle. 

In  regard  to  Hegel  Carlyle  never  expressed 
himself  even  as  clearly,  so  that  his  position  with 
reference  to  him  cannot  be  any  more  accurately 


*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  the  State  of  German  Literature,  p.  65. 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.       97 

defined.  "He  puts  a  high  estimation  upon 
him,"  *  as  Fronde  says,  and  we  shall  soon  dis- 
cover that  there  is  one  subject  on  which  the  two 
men  agree,  without  daring  to  draw  any  inference 
from  it. 

However  greatly  Carlyle  respected  the  various 
representatives  of  German  Idealism,  and  however 
deeply  he  was  impressed  by  them,  we  must  never- 
theless here,  at  the  conclusion  of  our  reflections 
on  his  attitude  toward  philosophy,  again  call  es- 
pecial attention  to  the  fact  that  he  acknowledged 
no  ultimate  end  in  the  whole  of  the  idealistic 
systematic  speculation. 

In  his  "  Essay  on  Characteristics,"  Carlyle 
speaks  of  "the  disease  of  metaphysics,"  and 
expresses  the  opinion  that  "  man  is  sent  hither 
not  to  question,  but  to  work ; "  and  he  even 
goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  "  the  mere  existence 
and  necessity  of  a  philosophy  is  an  evil ; "  that 
except  as  Poetry  and  Religion,  it  would  have  no 
being. 

"  Metaphysical  Speculation,  if  a  necessary  evil, 
is  the  forerunner  of  much  good  ....  for  of 
our  Modern  Metaphysics,  accordingly,  may  not 
this  already  be  said,  that  if  they  have  produced 
no  Affirmation,  they  have  destroyed  much  Nega- 

*  Fronde's  Carlyle,  vol.  ii.,  chap.  2. 


98  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

tion  ?  It  is  a  disease  expelling  a  disease  :  the 
fire  of  Doubt,  consuming  away  the  Doubtful; 
that  so  the  Certain  come  to  light,  and  again  lie 
visible  on  the  surface.  English  or  French  Meta- 
physics, in  reference  to  this  last  stage  of  the 
Speculative  process,  are  not  what  we  allude  to 
here  ;  but  only  the  Metaphysics  of  the  Germans. 
In  France  or  England,  since  the  days  of  Diderot 
and  Hume,  though  all  thought  has  been  of  a 
sceptico-metaphysical  texture,  so  far  as  there 
was  any  Thought,  we  have  seen  no  Metaphysics, 
but  only  more  or  less  ineffectual  questions  whether 
such  could  be.  In  the  Pyrrhonism  of  Hume  and 
the  Materialism  of  Diderot,  Logic  had,  as  it 
were,  overshot  itself,  overset  itself.  Now  though 
the  athlete,  to  use  our  old  figure,  cannot,  by 
much  lifting,  lift  up  his  own  body,  he  may  shift 
it  out  of  a  laming  posture,  and  get  to  stand  in  a 
free  one. 

"  Such  a  service  have  German  Metaphysics 
done  for  man's  mind.  The  second  sickness  of 
Speculation  has  abolished  both  itself  and  the 
first.  Friedrich  Schlegel  complains  much  of  the 
fraitlessness,  the  tumult  and  transiency  of  Ger- 
man as  of  all  Metaphysics ;  and  with  reason. 
Yet  in  that  wide-spreading,  deep-whirling  vortex 
of  Kantism,  so  soon  metamorphosed  into  Fichte- 
ism,  Schellingism,  and  then  as  Hegelism,  and 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  SCIENCE.        99 

Cousinism,  perhaps  finally  evaporated,  is  not  this 
issue  visible  enough,  that  Pyrrhonism  and  Ma- 
terialism, themselves  necessary  phenomena  in 
European  culture,  have  disappeared ;  and  a  Faith 
in  Eeligion  has  again  become  possible  and  in- 
evitable for  the  scientific  mind ;  and  the  word 
Free-thinker  no  longer  means  the  Denier  or  Cav- 
iller, but  the  Believer,  or  the  Ready  to  believe  ? 
Nay,  in  the  higher  Literature  of  Germany,  there 
already  lies,  for  him  that  can  read  it,  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  revelation  of  the  Godlike ;  as  yet 
unrecognised  by  the  mass  of  the  world;  but 
waiting  there  for  recognition,  and  sure  to  find 
it  when  the  fit  hour  comes.  This  age  is  not 
wholly  without  its  prophets."  * 


*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Characteristics,  pp.  35-36. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY 
AND  ART  IN  GENERAL. 

Literature  is  but  a  branch  of  Beligion,  and  always  participates 
in  its  character  ;  however  in  our  time  it  is  the  only  branch  that 
still  shows  any  greenness  ;  and  as  some  think  must  one  day  be- 
come the  main  stem. — Carlyle's  Essay  on  Characteristics,  p.  20. 

Poetry  is  another  form  of  Wisdom. — Carlyle's  Essay  on  Burns, 
p.  49. 

"  And  knowest  tliou  no  Prophet,  even  in  the 
vesture,  environment,  and  dialect  of  this  age  ? 
None  to  whom  the  Godlike  had  revealed  itself, 
through  all  meanest  and  highest  forms  of  the 
Common  ;  and  by  him  been  again  prophetically 
revealed  :  in  whose  inspired  melody,  even  in  these 
rag-gathering  and  rag-burning  days,  Man's  Life 
again  begins,  were  it  but  afar  off,  to  be  divine  ? 
Knowest  thou  none  such  ?  I  know  him,  and 
name  him — Goethe."  * 

And  this  it  is,  "  in  Goethe  and  more  or  less 
in  Schiller  and  the  rest,"  which  gives  the  most 

*  Sartus  Kesartus,  bk.  iii.,  chap.  7. 


CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.   101 

essential  feature  of  Carlyle's  conception  of  the 
nature  of  the  poet.  "  The  coldest  sceptic,  the 
most  callous  worldling,  sees  not  the  actual  as- 
pects of  life  more  sharply  than  they  are  here 
delineated :  the  Nineteenth  Century  stands  be- 
fore us,  in  all  its  contradiction  and  perplexity; 
barren,  mean  and  baleful,  as  we  have  all  known 
it ;  yet  here  no  longer  mean  and  barren,  but 
enamelled  into  beauty  in  the  poet's  spirit;  for 
its  secret  significance  is  laid  open,  and  thus,  as 
it  were,  the  life-giving  fire  that  slumbers  in  it 
is  called  forth,  and  flowers  and  foliage,  as  of 
old,  are  springing  on  its  bleakest  wilderness,  and 
overmantling  its  sternest  cliffs.  For  these  men 
have  not  only  the  clear  eye,  but  the  loving  heart. 
They  have  penetrated  into  the  mystery  of  Nature  ; 
after  long  trial  they  have  been  initiated ;  and 
to  unwearied  endeavour,  Art  has  at  last  yielded 
her  secret ;  and  thus  can  the  Spirit  of  our  Age, 
embodied  in  fair  imaginations,  look  forth  on  us, 
earnest  and  full  of  meaning,  from  their  works. 
As  the  first  and  indispensible  condition  of  good 
poets,  they  are  wise  and  good  men  :  much  they 
have  seen  and  suffered,  and  they  have  conquered 
all  this,  and  made  it  all  their  own  ;  they  have 
known  life  in  its  heights  and  depths,  and  mas- 
tered it  in  both,  and  can  teach  others  what  it 
is,  and  how  to  lead  it  rightly.  Their  minds  are 


102  THOMAS   CABLYLE. 

as  a  mirror  to  us,  when  the  perplexed  image  of 
our  own  being  is  reflected  back  in  soft  and  clear 
interpretation.  Here  mirth  and  gravity  are  blend- 
ed together ;  wit  rests  on  deep  devout  wisdom, 
as  the  green-sward  with  its  flowers  must  rest  on 
the  rock,  whose  foundations  reach  downward  to 
the  centre.  In  a  word,  they  are  believers ;  but 
their  faith  is  no  sallow  plant  of  darkness ;  it  is 
green  and  flowery,  for  it  grows  in  the  sunlight. 
And  this  faith  is  the  doctrine  they  have  to  teach 
us,  the  sense  which,  under  every  noble  and  grace- 
ful form,  it  is  their  endeavour  to  set  forth : 

"  As  all  Nature's  thousand  changes 

But  one  changeless  God  proclaim, 
So  in  Art's  wide  kingdoms  ranges 

One  sole  meaning,  still  the  same  : 
This  is  Truth,  eternal  Reason, 

Which  from  Beauty  takes  its  dress, 
And,  serene  through  time  and  season, 

Stands  for  aye  in  lovliness." 

Such,  indeed,  is  the  end  of  Poetry  at  all  times  ; 
yet  in  no  recent  literature  known  to  us,  except 
the  German,  has  it  been  so  far  attained ;  nay, 
perhaps,  so  much  as  consciously  and  steadfastly 
attempted."  * 

To  this  conception  of  the  poet's  calling  which 
we  constantly  meet  with  in  his  works,  Caiiyle 

*  State  of  German  Literature,  p.  56. 


CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.   103 

raised  himself  through  the  fervent  study  of  Goethe 
and  Schiller.  One  can  easily  picture  to  one's 
self  how  the  ^Scotch  peasant's  son,  reared  among 
stern,  primitive  and  very  circumscribed  notions 
of  things,  at  first  incredulously  opposed  Goethe's 
and  Schiller's  aesthetics.  Goethe's  idea  of  art, 
his  "  almost  religious  love  for  it "  appears  at  first 
to  Carlyle  to  be  "  odd,  inexplicable."  He  im- 
agines that  in  Germany,  as  well  as  in  other 
countries,  the  poet  is  differently  regarded.  But 
in  the  spring  of  1830  we  find  in  his  Journal — 
perhaps  with  direct  bearing  upon  Goethe's  gen- 
tle Xenie — *  the  foUowing  remarkable  words : 
"  Who  possesses  science  and  art,  has  also  Reli- 
gion ;  who  does  not  possess  either,  he  must  have 
Religion." 

"  What  is  art  and  poetry  ?  Is  the  beautiful 
higher  than  the  good  ?  A  higher  form  thereof  ? 
Thus  were  a  poet  not  only  a  priest,  but  a  high- 
priest."  "  When  Goethe  and  SchiUer  say  or  in- 
sinuate that  art  is  higher  than  religion,  do  they 
mean  perhaps  this?  That  whereas  religion  re- 
presents (what  is  the  essence  of  truth  for  man) 
the  good  is  infinitely  (the  word  is  emphatic)  dif- 


*  "Xenie"  was  a  name  given  to  satirical  epigrams  used  by 
Goethe  and  Schiller;  but  the  "gentle  Xenie"  was  used  solely 
by  Goethe. 


104  THOMAS  CAKLYLE. 

ferent  from  the  evil,  but  sets  them  in  a  state 
of  hostility  (as  in  heaven  and  hell),  art  likewise 
admits  and  inculcates  this  quite  infinite  difference, 
but  without  hostility,  with  peacefulness,  like  the 
difference  of  two  poles  which  cannot  coalesce 
yet  do  not  quarrel — nay,  should  not  quarrel,  for 
both  are  essential  to  the  whole.  In  this  way  is 
Goethe's  morality  to  be  considered  as  a  higher 
(apart  from  its  comprehensiveness,  nay,  univer- 
sality) than  has  hitherto  been  promulgated  ? 
Sehr  einseitig !  And  yet  perhaps  there  is  a 
glimpse  of  the  truth  here."  * 

The  germ  of  Goethe's  and  Schiller's  doctrine 
of  the  beauty  and  sublimity  of  the  poet's  calling, 
became  still  further  developed  in  Carlyle.  It  re- 
ceived nourishment  through  the  study  of  Mil- 
ton, to  whom  at  this  time  he  was  devoting  him- 
self. In  Milton  he  found — as  well  as  the  deepest 
religious  and  puritanical  sentiments — ideas  which 
he  could  bring  into  harmony  with  those  of 
Goethe's.  He  was  particularly  impressed  by  the 
peculiar  didactic  tendency  which  Milton  dis- 
played as  a  poet.  The  nobleness  of  the  moral 
claim  ennobled  the  question  of  the  poet's  calling 
in  the  eyes  of  the  primitive  but  prejudiced  Scotch 
mind  ;  the  claim  that  he  who  expressed  the  hope 

*  Froude's  Life  of  Carlyle,  vol.  ii.,  p.  17. 


105 


of  becoming  a  great  poet  and  of  writing  "  pure 
and  sublime  thoughts "  ought  himself  to  be  "a 
true  poem,"  a  pattern  of  "  the  best  and  honour- 
ablest  things."  * 

As  Milton's  ideal  for  the  poet  is  not  realizable 
in  "  the  heat  of  youth  or  the  vapours  of  wine," 
as  his  ideal  is  not  supported  by  the  "  invocation 
of  dame  Memory  and  her  siren  daughters "  he 
considers  the  gift  lent  him  "  but  by  devout  prayer 
to  that  Eternal  Spirit  who  can  enrich  with  all 
utterance  and  knowledge,  and  sends  out  His 
seraphim  with  the  hallowed  fire  of  His  altar,  to 
touch  and  purify  the  lips  of  whom  He  pleases."  t 

These  Miltonic  ideals,  which  in  Germany  Klop- 
stock  had  represented,  appear  to  stand  in  sharp 
contrast  to  Goethe's  and  Schiller's  aesthetic  views, 
and  form  a  very  prominent  part  of  Carlyle's. 

He  considers  the  poet  to  be  "  an  inspired  think- 
er," J  a  soul  who  performs  heavenly  music ;  his 
mission  is  to  sing  the  glory  of  God.  True  poetry 
is  a  holy,  divine,  inspired  thing.  The  essential 
element  of  the  poet  is,  according  to  Carlyle,  re- 
ligion ;  and  this  view  at  once  makes  it  clear 
what  Carlyle's  standpoint  is  as  to  the  question 

*  Milton's  Apology  for  Smectymnus,  (ed.  Bohn)  p.  118. 
f  Second  book  of  Reason  of  Church  Government,  (ed.  Fletch- 
er) introductory  paragraph,  p.  44. 
|  Essay  on  the  Death  of  Goethe. 


106  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

of  the  relation  of  Poetry  to  Religion .  Car- 
lyle's  idea  here  exactly  coincides  with  Hegel's, 
who  represents  "  the  Fine  Arts  only  as  a  degree 
of  freedom,  not  as  the  highest  freedom  itself," 
and  points  out  to  the  "  Fine  Arts  "  its  "  future 
in  true  religion."  And  when  Schiller,  impressed 
by  the  feeling  of  the  highest  unity  of  the  moral, 
the  religious  and  the  beautiful  (in  the  Ideal), 
uses  the  words :  "  The  healthy  and  beautiful 
nature  needs  no  morality,  no  metaphysics,"  * 
you  could  just  as  well  say  it  needs  no  divine, 
no  immortality  upon  which  to  repose  and  main- 
tain itself. 

This  form  of  expression  would  not  have  met 
with  favour  in  Carlyle's  eyes,  for  he  would  have 
replied  that  healthy  morality  and  religiousness 
needs  no  beauty — it  has  and  comprehends  the 
only  true  beauty  in  itself.  It  was  exactly  this 
religious  element  which  was  an  inner  strength 
to  Carlyle,  to  the  poet  and  to  all  men,  giving 
solidity  without  enchaining.  And  if  he  believed 
that  religion  was  the  essence,  the  unconsciously 
living  element  of  the  poet,  he  was,  nevertheless, 
far  from  wishing  to  make  it  bend  to  the  yoke 
of  any  especial  religious  views.  As  the  moral 
law  and  the  moral  duty  do  not  cause  man  to 

*  Schiller  and  Goethe's  Correspondence. 


CABLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.   107 

deteriorate,  but  help  to  elevate  and  give  liim 
freedom,  in  the  same  way  does  the  Divine,  if 
it  penetrates  the  poet,  not  oppress,  but  gives  him 
its  sanction. 

"  Ever  must  the  Fine  Arts  be  if  not  religion, 
yet  indissolubly  united  to  it,  dependent  on  it, 
virtually  blended  with  it,  as  body  is  with  soul."  * 

"  Poetry  is  but  another  form  of  Wisdom,  of 
Religion  ;  is  itself  Wisdom  and  Religion,"  that 
"  unspeakable  beauty  which  in  its  highest  clear- 
ness is  Religion."  t 

These  utterances,  and  those  which  follow,  show 
that  Carlyle's  views  are  not  materially  different 
from  Goethe's  :  "  Art  rests  upon  a  sort  of  re- 
ligious sense,  upon  a  deep,  immutable  earnest- 
ness, on  account  of  which  it  so  willingly  is  united 
to  Religion.  Religion  needs  no  Art-Sense — it 
rests  upon  its  own  earnestness,"  but  it  gives  as 
little  as  it  produces,  t  And  his  aphorisms  on 
the  History  of  the  Arts,  of  the  year  1808,  we 
by  no  means  wish  to  quote  as  a  mere  expression 
of  a  view  :  "  Art  has,  properly  speaking,  origin- 
ated out  of  and  in  Religion."  § 


*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Jesuitism,  p.  271. 

t  Carlyle's  Essay  on  History. 

|  Spniche  in  Prosa,  (Leoper)  p.  690. 

§Op.cit.,p.H7. 


108  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

That  Carlyle  did  not  at  all  make  the  poetical 
endowment  dependent  on  the  religious  feeling, 
must  be  explicitly  stated,  for  it  is  not  by  any 
means  a  gift  to  clothe  the  religious  feeling  in 
verse. 

"  Poetry  is  Inspiration :  has  in  it  a  certain 
spirituality — it  is  no  separate  faculty,  no  organ 
which  can  be  superadded  to  the  rest,  or  dis- 
joined from  them ;  but  rather  the  result  of  their 
general  harmony  and  completeness.  The  feelings, 
the  gifts  that  exist  in  the  Poet  are  those  that  ex- 
ist in  every  human  soul.  The  imagination  which 
shudders  at  the  Hell  of  Dante,  is  the  same  fac- 
ulty, weaker  in  degree,  which  called  that  picture 
into  being.  How  does  the  Poet  speak  to  men, 
with  power,  but  by  being  still  more  a  man  than 
they  ?  "  * 

Carlyle  seems  to  prefer  to  designate  the  poet 
by  one  word — Yates — which  he  again  and  again 
uses.  Let  us  try  to  comprehend  his  ideal. 

"  The  true  poet  is  ever,  as  of  old,  the  Seer ; 
whose  eye  has  been  gifted  to  discern  the  godlike 
mystery  of  God's  Universe,  and  to  decipher  some 
new  lines  of  its  celestial  writing  ;  we  can  still  call 
him  a  Vates  and  Seer ;  for  he  sees  into  this 
greatest  of  secrets,  '  the  open  secret ; '  hidden 


*  Essay  on  Burns,  vol.  ii.,  p.  18. 


CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.  109 

things  become  clear ;  how  the  future  (both  rest- 
ing on  Eternity)  is  but  another  phase  of  the  Pre- 
sent :  thereby  are  his  words  in  very  truth  pro- 
phetic ;  what  he  has  spoken  shall  be  done."  * 

The  greatest  gift  which  can  fall  to  the  lot  of  one 
man — as  Prophet  and  Seer — fell  to  the  "  Yates  :  " 
that  of  revealing  "  Poetic  Beauty."  t  "  As  the 
material  Seer  is  the  eye  and  revealer  of  all  things, 
so  is  Poetry,  so  is  the  World-Poet,  in  a  spiritual 
sense."  J  He,  the  World-Poet,  is  the  only  true 
interpreter  of  the  invisible,  the  Eternal,  as  it  is 
revealed  in  the  world.  He  has  not  far  to  seek 
for  material,  for  the  ideal  world  is  not  separat- 
ed from  the  material  world,  but  permeates  and 
fills  it. 

"  Wherever  there  is  a  sky  above  him,  and  a 
world  around  him,  the  poet  is  in  his  place  ;  for 
here,  too,  is  man's  existence,  with  its  infinite 
longings  and  small  requirings  ;  its  ever-thwarted, 
ever-renewed  endeavours,  its  unspeakable  aspira- 
tions, its  fears  and  hopes  that  wander  through 
Eternity;  and  all  the  mystery  of  brightness  and 
of  gloom  that  it  was  ever  made  of,  in  any  age 
or  climate,  since  man  first  began  to  live.  Is  there 


*  Essay  on  Death  of  Goethe,  p.  44. 

f  Biography,  p.  59. 

|  Essay  on  Death  of  Goethe,  p.  43. 


110  THOMAS   CARLYLE, 

not  the  fifth  act  of  a  Tragedy  in  every  death- 
bed, though  it  were  a  peasant's,  and  a  bed  of 
heath  ?  And  are  wooings  and  weddings  obsolete, 
that  there  can  be  Comedy  no  longer  ?  Or  are 
men  suddenly  grown  wise,  that  Laughter  must  no 
longer  shake  his  sides,  but  be  cheated  of  his 
Farce  ?  Man's  life  and  nature  is,  as  it  was,  and 
as  it  ever  will  be.  But  the  poet  must  have  an 
eye  to  read  these  things,  and  a  heart  to  under- 
stand them ;  or  they  come  and  pass  away  be- 
fore him  in  vain.  He  is  a  Vates,  a  seer ;  a  gift 
of  vision  has  been  given  him.  Has  life  no  mean- 
ings for  him,  which  another  cannot  equally  de- 
cipher ;  then  he  is  no  poet,  and  Delphi  itself 
will  not  make  him  one."  * 

Prophet  and  Poet  are  for  Carlyle  of  one  stock, 
and  according  to  his  opinion  it  is  only  an  indi- 
cation of  a  perversely  developed  epoch  which 
could  be  blinded  to  this  unity. 

"  They  both  have  penetrated  into  the  sacred 
mystery  of  the  Universe ;  what  Goethe  calls 
*  the  open  secret.'  '  The  open  secret,'  open  to 
all,  seen  by  almost  none  !  That  divine  mystery, 
which  lies  everywhere  in  all  Beings,  the  *  Divine 
Idea  of  the  World,'  that  which  lies  at  the  'bot- 
tom of  appearance,'  as  Fichte  styles  it ;  of  which 

*  Essay  on  Burns,  p.  13. 


CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.   Ill 

all  appearances,  from  the  starry  sky  to  the  grass 
of  the  field,  but  especially  the  Appearance  of 
Man  and  his  work,  is  but  the  vesture,  the  em- 
bodiment that  renders  it  visible.  This  mystery 
is  in  all  times  and  in  all  places ;  veritably  is. 
In  most  times  and  places  it  is  greatly  overlooked  ; 
and  the  Universe,  definable  always  in  one  or  the 
other  dialect,  as  the  realised  Thought  of  God, 
is  considered  as  a  trivial,  inert,  commonplace 
matter, — as  if,  says  the  Satirist,  it  were  a  dead 
thing,  which  some  upholsterer  had  put  together ! 
It  could  do  no  good,  at  present,  to  speak  much 
about  this  ;  but  it  is  a  pity  for  every  one  of  us 
if  we  do  not  know  it,  live  ever  in  the  knowledge 
of  it.  Really  a  most  mournful  pity ; — a  failure 
to  live  at  all,  if  we  live  otherwise!  But  now,  I 
say,  whoever  may  forget  this  divine  mystery, 
the  Vates,  whether  Prophet  or  Poet,  has  pene- 
trated into  it ;  is  a  man  sent  hither  to  make  it 
more  impressively  known  to  us.  That  always 
is  his  message ;  he  is  to  reveal  that  to  us, — 
that  sacred  mystery  which  he,  more  than  others, 
lives  ever  present  with.  While  others  forget  it, 
he  knows  it ;  I  might  say,  he  has  been  driven 
to  know  it ;  without  consent  asked  of  him,  he 
finds  himself  living  in  it,  bound  to  live  in  it. 
Once  more,  here  is  no  Hearsay,  but  a  direct 
Insight  and  Belief ;  this  man,  too,  could  not  help 


112  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

being  a  sincere  man!  Whoever  may  live  in  the 
shows  of  things,  it  is  for  him  a  necessity  of  nature 
to  live  in  the  very  fact  of  things.  A  man  once 
more,  in  earnest  with  the  Universe,  though  all 
others  were  but  toying  with  it.  He  is  a  Vates, 
first  of  all,  in  virtue  of  being  sincere.  So  far 
Poet  and  Prophet,  participators  in  the  '  open  se- 
cret,' are  one. 

"  With  respect  to  their  distinction  again :  The 
Vates  Prophet,  we  might  say,  has  siezed  that 
sacred  mystery  rather  on  the  moral  side,  as  Good 
and  Evil,  Duty  and  Prohibition  ;  the  Vates  Poet 
on  what  the  Germans  call  the  aesthetic  side,  as 
Beautiful,  and  the  like.  The  one  we  call  a  re- 
vealer  of  what  we  are  to  do ;  the  other  of  what 
we  are  to  love.  But  indeed  these  two  provinces 
run  into  one  another,  and  cannot  be  disjoined. 
The  Prophet,  too,  has  his  eye  on  what  we  are 
to  love :  how  else  shall  he  know  what  it  is  we  are 
to  do?  The  highest  Voice  ever  heard  on  this 
earth  said  withal:  'Consider  the  lilies  of  the 
field;  they  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin:  yet 
Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like 
one  of  these' — a  glance,  that,  into  the  deepest 
deep  of  Beauty.  '  The  lilies  of  the  field,' — dressed 
finer  than  earthly  princes,  springing  up  there 
in  the  humble  furrow-field ;  a  beautiful  eye  look- 
ing-out  on  you,  from  the  great  inner  Sea  of 


CABLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.  113 

Beauty !  How  could  the  rude  Earth  make  these, 
if  her  Essence,  rugged  as  she  looks  and  is, 
were  not  inwardly  Beauty?  In  this  point  of 
view,  too,  a  saying  of  Goethe's,  which  has  stag- 
gered several,  may  have  meaning  :  '  This  Beauti- 
ful,' he  intimates,  '  is  higher  than  the  Good ; 
the  Beautiful  includes  in  it  the  Good.'  The 
true  Beautiful ;  which,  however,  I  have  said  some- 
where, '  differs  from  the  false  as  Heaven  does 
from  Vauxhall!"* 

This  research  of  Carlyle's  apparently  only  leads 
to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  no  difference  be- 
tween true  poetry  and  "  true  speech,  not  poet- 
ical," but  Carlyle  does  not  disappoint  us  here. 

"  On  this  point  many  things  have  been  written, 
especially  by  the  late  German  Critics,  some  of 
which  are  not  very  intelligible  at  first.  They  say, 
for  example,  that  the  Poet  has  an  infinitude  in 
him ;  communicates  an  UnendlichJceit,  a  certain 
character  of  '  infinitude,'  to  whatsoever  he  de- 
lineates. This,  though  not  very  precise,  yet  in 
so  vague  a  matter  is  worth  remembering :  if  well 
meditated,  some  meaning  will  gradually  be  found 
in  it.  For  my  own  part,  I  find  considerable 
meaning  in  the  old  vulgar  distinction  of  Poetry 
being  metrical,  having  music  in  it,  being  a  Song. 


Carlyle's  Lecture  on  Heroes,  pp.  75-76. 


114  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

Truly,  if  pressed  to  give  a  definition,  one  might 
say  this  as  soon  as  anything  else :  If  your  delinea- 
tion be  authentically  musical,  musical  not  in  the 
word  only,  but  in  heart  and  substance,  in  all 
the  thoughts  and  utterances  of  it,  in  the  whole 
conception  of  it,  then  it  will  be  poetical ;  if  not, 
not. — Musical :  how  much  lies  in  that !  A  musical 
thought  is  one  spoken  by  a  mind  that  has  pene- 
trated into  the  inmost  heart  of  the  thing ;  de- 
tected the  inmost  mystery  of  it,  namely,  the 
melody  that  lies  hidden  in  it ;  the  inward  har- 
mony of  coherence  [which,  is  its  soul,  whereby  it 
exists,  and  has  a  right  to  be,  here  in  this  world. 
All  inmost  things,  we  may  say,  are  melodious ; 
naturally  utter  themselves  in  Song.  The  mean- 
ing of  Song  goes  deep.  Who  is  there  that,  in 
logical  Words,  can  express  the  effect  that  music 
has  on  us  ?  A  kind  of  inarticulate  unfathom- 
able speech,  which  leads  us  to  the  edge  of  the 
Infinite,  and  lets  us  for  moments  gaze  into  that ! 
All  speech,  even  the  commonest  speech,  has 
something  of  song  in  it :  not  a  parish  in  the  world 
but  has  its  parish-accent ; — the  rhythm  or  tune 
to  which  .the  people  there  sing  what  they  have 
to  say !  Accent  is  a  kind  of  chanting ;  all  men 
have  an  accent  of  their  own, — though  they  only 
notice  that  of  others.  .  ,  .  .  All  deep  things 
are  Song.  It  seems  somehow  the  very  central 


CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.   115 

essence  of  us,  Song ;  as  if  the  rest  were  but  wrap- 
page and  hulls !  The  primal  element  of  us  ;  of 
us  and  of  all  things.  The  Greeks  fabled  of 
Sphere-Harmonies  :  it  was  the  feeling  they  had 
of  the  inner  structure  of  Nature  ;  that  the  soul 
of  all  her  voices  and  utterances  was  perfect 
music.  Poetry,  therefore,  we  will  call  musical 
Thought.  The  Poet  is  he  who  thinks  in  that 
manner.  At  bottom,  it  turns  still  on  the  power 
of  intellect ;  it  is  a  man's  sincerity  and  depth 
of  vision  that  makes  him  a  Poet.  See  deep 
enough,  and  you  see  musically ;  the  heart  of 
Nature  being  everywhere  music,  if  you  can  only 
reach  it."  * 

So  the  poet  is,  according  to  Carlyle,  naturally 
the  deepest  of  all  thinkers.  Poetry  is  insight, 
a  higher  knowledge ;  the  true  thinker  alone 
is  the  poet,  the  Seer.  Heavenly  wisdom  pos- 
sesses his  Soul,  fills  his  heart :  it  is  the  North 
Star  which  guides  him  through  life  independent 
of  external  success  or  of  external  worldly  re- 
sults. 

"  We  often  hear  of  this  and  the  other  external 
condition  being  requisite  for  the  existence  of  a 
poet.  Sometimes  it  is  a  certain  sort  of  training ; 


*  On  Heroes,  p.  78. 


116  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

he  must  have  studied  certain  things,  studied,  for 
instance,  '  the  elder  dramatists,'  and  so  learned 
a  poetic  language  ;  as  if  poetry  lay  in  the  tongue, 
not  in  the  heart.  At  other  times  we  are  told  he 
must  be  bred  in  a  certain  rank,  and  must  be 
on  a  confidential  footing  with  the  higher  classes ; 
because,  above  all  things,  he  must  see  the  world. 
As  to  seeing  the  world,  we  apprehend  this  wih1 
cause  him  little  difficulty,  if  he  have  but  eyesight 
to  see  it  with The  mysterious  work- 
manship of  man's  heart,  the  true  light  and  the 
inscrutable  darkness  of  man's  destiny,  reveal 
themselves  not  only  in  capital  cities  and  crowded 
saloons,  but  in  every  hut  and  hamlet  where  men 
have  their  abode."  * 

It  was  "  not  personal  enjoyment,"  freedom 
from  care  and  a  merry,  jovial  life  which  made 
him  great,  "  but  a  high,  heroic  idea  of  Religion, 
of  Patriotism,  of  heavenly  Wisdom,  in  one  or  the 
other  form,  in  which  cause  he  neither  shrank 
from  suffering,  nor  called  on  the  earth  to  witness 
it  as  something  wonderful ;  but  patiently  endured, 
counting  it  blessedness  enough  so  to  spend  and 
be  spent."  t 

On  this  subject  Carlyle  is  continually  waging 


*  Essay  on  Burns,  pp.  13-14. 
f  Op.  cit.,  p.  48. 


CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.   117 

an  internecine  war  against  those  whom  he  calls 
the  "  sweet  singers."  The  poet's  task  is  not  to 
offer  "  pleasant  singing "  and  to  prepare  "  de- 
lights "  for  the  indolent.  "When  "  Fine  Litera- 
ture "  concerns  itself  with  "  the  unspeakable 
glories  and  rewards  of  pleasing  its  generation," 
it  becomes  a  degradation  to  Art,  and  has  as  little 
to  do  with  it  as  where  united  with  every  pomp 
of  the  opera,  of  the  stage  and  of  music,  it  solely 
tries  to  become  a  slave  to  the  vile  amusement  of 
the  epoch. 

This  explains  Carlyle's  merciless  and  often  too 
severe  judgment  of  almost  all  his  contemporaries 
in  English  Literature.  With  the  exception  of 
Tennyson,  Buskin,  Browning,  Arthur  Clough  and 
a  few  others,  his  judgment  is  almost  entirely  an 
unfavourable  one.  The  measure  which  he  used 
in  forming  an  estimate  of  his  ideal  poets,  Homer, 
.ZEschulus,  Dante,  Shakspeare,  Milton,  Goethe 
and  Schiller,  he  applied  to  all  other  poets  in 
order  to  determine  their  absolute  significance  in 
history.  Even  such  men  as  Byron  and  Burns, 
the  latter  especially  his  favourite,  did  not  escape 
this  tribunal. 

His  judgment  of  the  professional,  literary  and 
art  critics  supplies  us  with  further  information 
as  to  his  conception  of  the  relation  of  poetry  and 
art  in  general.  To  quibble  about  a  poem  or  an 


118  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

art  work  was  not  only  distasteful  to  him,  but  ap- 
peared a  manifest  hypocrisy  and  lie. 

"  The  Fine  Arts  become  a  Throne  of  Hypo- 
crisy." Falsehood  reigns  here  sovereign,  and 
covers  the  abyss  with  sparkling  words.  "  The 
Fine  Arts,  wherever  they  turn  up  as  business, 
whatever  Committee  sit  upon  them,  are  sure  to 
be  parent  of  much  empty  talk,  labourious  hypo- 
crisy, dillettanteism,  futility ;  involving  huge  trou- 
ble and  expense,  and  babble,  which  end  in  no 
result,  if  not  in  worse  than  none."  * 

This  single  quotation  is  quite  sufficient  here. 
What  justifies  him  in  this  anger  is  his  own 
worth.  His  savage  mood  knows  no  boundaries 
in  the  attack  against  this  modern  "  art-lie."  The 
kernel  of  truth  in  this  warfare  is  easily  recog- 
nized and  will  retain  its  value,  for  certainly  it 
will  forever  be  better  "to  perambulate  through  a 
picture-gallery  with  little  or  no  speech ;  t  but 
on  the  other  hand,  however,  it  must  be  strong- 
ly emphasized  that  Carlyle's  understanding  of 
Art  and  interest  in  Art — so  far  as  the  plastic 
arts  are  concerned — was  neither  sufficiently  ver- 
satile nor  great  to  give  an  independent  and 
worthy  judgment. 


*  Jesuitism,  p.  272. 

f  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling,  chap.  7. 


CARLYLE'S  CONCEPTION  OF  POETRY  AND  ART.   119 

Schiller  was  not  ashamed  to  confess  (in  a  letter 
to  Humboldt,  written  on  February  17th,  1803) 
that  "  Italy  and  Eome  are  no  countries  for  me ; 
the  mere  '  matter  '  [das  Physische]  would  oppress 
me,  and  the  aesthetic  would  give  me  no  delight, 
because  an  interest  and  feeling  for  the  plastic 
arts  is  wanting  in  me  "—and  similar  was  it  with 
Cartyle,  although  he  did  not  so  openly  acknowl- 
edge it,  and  would  not  modify  his  severe  judg- 
ment of  the  "Gallery  and  Cathedral  Visitors"*  in 
Rome,  when  his  criticism  really  only  touches  the 
fashionable  foolery,  and  cannot  at  all  be  applied 
to  such  a  spirit  as  Sterling,  whose  deepest  in- 
terests in  life  were  linked  to  the  plastic  arts.  * 

The  only  work  of  art  for  which  Carlyle  really 
had  a  most  perfect  understanding  and  interest 
was  the  portrait,  his  deep  interest  in  which  is 
proved  already  by  the  fact  that  it  was  he  who 
first  proposed  the  establishment  of  a  national 
portrait  gallery  in  Scotland.  (He  had  sorely 
missed  such  an  one  in  Berlin,  where  he  had 
tried  to  become  familiar  with  the  time  of  Fred- 
erick the  Great.)  Further  was  this  shown  in  a 
high  degree  in  an  Essay  on  the  various  portraits 
of  John  Knox.  We  seem  too  unappreciative  of 
these  delicate  observations  which  we  are  indebted 


Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling,  pp.  148-154. 


120  THOMAS   CARLYLE. 

to  his  pen  for.  It  is  sufficient  here,  however, 
to  merely  draw  attention  to  his  words  on  Cra- 
nach's  portraits  of  Luther.  The  walls  of  his 
study  were  completely  covered  by  the  best  and 
the  most  interesting  portraits  which  he  could 
procure  of  all  his  "  heroes." 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 

CARLYLKS  ATTITUDE    TOWARD 
HISTORY. 

A  confession  made  by  Carlyle  in  his  Journal 
of  1842 — of  the  publication  of  which  he  never 
dreamed — admits  us  into  the  most  secret  recesses 
of  his  thought  and  feeling :  "Of  Dramatic  Art, 
though  I  have  eagerly  listened  to  a  Goethe  speak- 
ing of  it,  and  to  several  hundreds  of  others  mum- 
bling and  trying  to  speak  of  it,  I  find  that  I, 
practically  speaking,  know  yet  almost  as  good 
as  nothing.  Indeed,  of  Art  generally,  (I&mst,  so 
called)  I  can  almost  know  nothing.  My  first 
and  last  secret  of  Kunst  is  to  get  a  thorough 
intelligence  of  the  fact  to  be  painted,  represented, 
or,  in  whatever  way,  set  forth — the  fact  deep  as 
Hades,  high  as  heaven,  and  written  so,  as  to  the 
visual  face  of  it  upon  our  poor  earth.  This  once 
blazing  within  me,  if  it  will  ever  get  to  blaze, 
and  bursting  to  be  out,  one  has  to  take  the  whole 
dexterity  of  adaptation  one  is  master  of,  and 
with  tremendous  struggling,  contrive  to  exhibit 


122  THOMAS   CAKLYLE. 

it,  one  way  or  the  other.  This  is  not  Art,  I 
know  well."  * 

All  of  Carlyle's  natural  endowments  led  him 
into  other  channels  than  those  of  art  in  its  ordi- 
nary sense :  in  history,  in  the  study  of  mankind, 
he  found  the  arrangement  of  the  Eternal  most 
beautifully  and  divinely  revealed.  God  was  to 
him  the  only  Artist  whose  works  he  cared  to 
study  with  a  religious  and  respectful  spirit. 
Nature  was  great  and  divine,  but  man  seemed 
to  him  the  divinest  creation,  and  of  man's  life, 
his  growth  and  development,  his  struggles  and 
aspirations,  his  faithful  toil,  his  good  fortune,  his 
misfortune,  and  his  final  passing  away,  as  it  re- 
peats itself  over  and  over  again  in  the  course  of 
history,  in  powerful  changes  and  yet  in  perpet- 
ual unity,  that  was  to  him  "  the  eternal,  constant 
Gospel "  which  his  soul  thirsted  to  understand, 
which  filled  his  heart  with  poetry,  which  stimu- 
lated every  nerve,  and  which  broke  forth  in  all 
his  works,  and — although  written  in  prose — made 
genuine  poetic  creations. 

History  and  the  writing  of  history — considered 
from  Carlyle's  point  of  view — was  the  proper  field 
of  activity  for  Carlyle's  mind.  He  not  only  de- 
voted the  greater  portion  of  his  life  and  his  best 

*  Froudd  s  Life  of  Carlyle,  Franklin  Square  Ed.,  vol.  iii.,  p.  40. 


CAKLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  HISTORY.      123 

years  to  it,  but  was  indebted  to  it  for  his  repu- 
tation. 

The  following  quotations  show  his  comprehen- 
sion of  history :  "  In  the  one  little  Letter  of 
2Eneas  Sylvius  there  is  more  of  history  than  in 
all  of  Robertson."  *  "  The  thing  I  want  to  see 
is  not  Red  Book  Lists  and  Court  Calendars,  and 
Parliamentary  Registers,  but  the  Life  of  Man : 
what  men  did  and  thought,  suffered,  enjoyed; 
the  form,  especially  the  spirit,  of  their  terrestrial 
existence,  its  outward  environment,  its  inward 
principle  ;  how  and  what  it  was ;  whence  it  pro- 
ceeded, whither  it  was  tending.  Mournful,  in 
truth,  is  it  to  behold  what  the  business  called 
'  History,'  in  these  so  enlightened  and  illuminat- 
ed times,  still  continues  to  be.  Can  you  gather 
from  it,  read  till  your  eyes  go  out,  any  dimmest 
shadow  of  an  answer  to  that  great  question: 
How  men  lived  and  had  their  being  ;  were  it  but 
economically,  as,  what  wages  they  got,  and  what 
they  bought  with  these  ?  "  t 

History  does  not  consist  in  relating  court  in- 
trigues and  stories  of  Prime  Ministers  and  their 
countries  ;  it  does  not  consist  in  the  conscientious 
binding  together  of  deeds  or  the  best  representa- 


*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  p.  84. 
f  Loc.  cit. 


124  THOMAS   CABLYLE. 

tion  of  the  development  of  the  forms  of  State ; 
the  object  of  the  historian  is  to  represent  the 
inner  conditions  of  life,  the  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious aspirations  of  mankind,  which  are  never 
alike  in  two  dissimilar  ages.  Not  alone  battles 
and  war  tumults,  not  alone  laws  and  constitutions 
and  their  developments,  which,  nevertheless,  "  are 
not  our  Life,  but  only  the  house  wherein  our  Life 
is  led."  *  To  contemplate  all  the  long-forgotten 
and  concealed  acts  and  phenomena  of  the  human 
species,  to  penetrate  ' reverently'  the  spiritual 
and  physical  nature,  to  depict  what  is  of  promise, 
that  is  task  set  before  the  historian. 

The  most  important  part  of  history  is,  perhaps, 
not  for  one  person  to  relate  it  in  general,  "  for  as 
all  Action  is,  by  its  nature,  to  be  figured  as  ex- 
tended in  breadth  and  depth,  as  well  as  in  length ; 
that  is  to  say,  is  based  on  Passion  and  Mystery,  if 
we  investigate  its  origin ;  and  spreads  abroad  on 
all  hands,  modifying  and  modified;  as  well  as 
advances  towards  completion, — so  all  narrative 
is,  by  nature,  of  only  one  dimension  ;  only  travels 
forward  towards  us,  or  towards  successive  points  : 
Narrative  is  linear,  Action  is  solid.  Also  for  our 
'  chains,'  or  chainlets,  of  '  canvas  and  effects,'  " 
which  we  so  assiduously  track  through  certain 

*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  History,  p.  255. 


CAKLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  HISTORY.      125 

hand-breadths  of  years  and  square  miles,  when 
the  whole  is  a  broad,  deep  Immensity,  and  each 
atom  is  '  chained '  and  complected  with  all ! 
Truly,  if  History  is  Philosophy  teaching  by  ex- 
perience, the  writer  fitted  to  compose  History  is 
hitherto  an  unknown  man.  The  Experience  it- 
self would  require  All-knowledge  to  record  it, — 
were  the  All-wisdom  needful  for  such  Philoso- 
phy as  would  interpret  it  to  be  had  for  ask- 
ing. Better  were  it  that  mere  earthly  Histori- 
ans should  lower  such  pretensions,  more  suitable 
for  Reminiscence  than  for  human  science ;  and 
aiming  only  at  some  picture  of  the  things  acted, 
which  picture  itself  will  at  best  be  a  poor  approx- 
imation, leave  the  inscrutable  purport  of  them 
an  acknowledged  secret;  or  at  most,  in  reverent 
Faith,  far  different  from  that  teaching  of  Philo- 
sophy, pause  over  the  mysterious  vestige  of 
Him,  whose  path  is  in  the  great  deep  of  Time 
whom  History  indeed  reveals,  but  only  all  His- 
tory, and  in  Eternity,  will  clearly  reveal."  * 

These  opinions  do  not  blunt  the  ardour  of  the 
investigator ;  they  only  inspire  him  with  a  desire 
to  search  more  and  more  into  the  past.  "  Let  all 
men  explore  it  as  the  true  fountain  of  knowledge  ; 
by  whose  light  alone,  consciously  or  unconscious- 


*  Carlyle's  E3say  on  History,  p.  258. 


126  THOMAS  CAKLYLE. 

ly  employed,  can  the  Present  or  the  Future  be 
interpreted  or  guessed."  * 

This  ideal  of  the  science  of  history  admits  of  a 
distinction  between  the  Artist  and  Artisan  ;   the 
one    '  labours '    mechanically  in   his   department 
without  turning  his  eye  upon  the  whole,  perhaps 
without  feeling  that  there  is  a  whole  ;  the  other 
informs  and  ennobles  the  humblest  sphere  in  life 
with  an  idea  of  the  whole,  and  habitually  knows 
that  only  in  the  whole  is  the  partial  to  be  truly 
discerned.      The   tasks   and  the   duties   of  these 
two  are  entirely  different,  and  each  has  his  defin- 
ite work,     "  The  simple  husbandman  can  till  his 
field,  and  by  knowledge  he  has  gained  of  its  soil, 
sow  it  with  the  fit  grain,  though  the  deep  rocks 
and  central  fires  are  unknown  to  him  :  his  little 
crop    hangs    under    and   over  the  firmament   of 
stars,     and     sails     through     untracked     celestial 
spaces,  between   Aries   and   Libra ;    nevertheless 
it  ripens  for  him  in  due  season  and  he  gathers 
it  safe  into  his  barn.     As  a  husbandman  he  is 
blameless  in  disregarding  those  higher  wonders ; 
but  as  a  thinker,  and  faithful  inquirer  into  Nat- 
ure, he  were  wrong.     So,  likewise,  is  it  with  the 
Historian,  who  examines  some  special  aspect  of 
History ;  and  from  this   or  that  combination   of 

*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  History,  p.  258. 


CABLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  HISTORY.      127 

circumstances, — political,  moral,  economical, — and 
the  issues  it  has  led  to,  infers  that  such  and  such 
properties  belong  to  human  society ;  and  that 
the  like  circumstances  will  produce  the  like  issue  ; 
which  inference,  if  other  trials  confirm  it,  must 
be  held  true  and  practically  valuable.  He  is 
wrong  only,  and  an  artisan,  when  he  fancies  that 
these  properties,  discovered  or  discoverable,  ex- 
haust the  matter ;  and  sees  not  at  every  step, 
that  it  is  inexhaustible. 

"  However,  that  class  of  cause-and-effect  spec- 
ulators, with  whom  no  wonder  would  remain 
wonderful,  but  all  things  in  Heaven  and  Earth 
must  be  computed  and  '  accounted  for ; '  and 
even  the  Unknown,  the  Infinite  in  man's  Life, 
had  under  the  words  enthusiasm,  superstition, 
spirit  of  the  age,  and  so  forth,  obtained,  as  it 
were,  an  algebraical  symbol  and  given  value, — 
have  now  well-nigh  played  their  part  in  European 
culture ;  and  may  be  considered,  as  in  most 
countries,  even  in  England  itself,  where  they 
linger  the  latest,  verging  toward  extinction."  * 

"  The  Political  Historian,  once  almost  the  sole 
cultivator  of  History,  has  now  found  various 
associates,  who  strive  to  elucidate  other  phases 
of  human  Life  ;  of  which,  as  hinted  above,  the 

*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  History,  p.  259. 


128  THOMAS   CAELYLE. 

political  conditions  it  is  passed  under  are  but 
one,  and  though  the  primary,  perhaps  not  the 
most  important,  of  the  many  outward  arrange- 
ments. Of  this  Historian  himself,  moreover,  in 
his  own  special  department,  new  and  higher 
things  are  beginning  to  be  expected.  From  of 
old,  it  was  too  often  to  be  reproachfully  observed 
of  him,  that  he  dwelt  with  disproportionate  fond- 
ness in  Senate-houses,  in  Battle-fields,  nay,  even 
in  Kings'  Antechambers ;  forgetting  that  far 
away  from  such  scenes,  the  mighty  tide  of 
Thought  and  Action  was  still  rolling  on  its  won- 
drous course,  in  gloom  and  brightness;  and  in 
its  thousand  remote  vaUeys,  a  whole  world  of 
Existence,  with  or  without  an  earthly  sun  of  Hap- 
piness to  warm  it,  with  or  without  a  heavenly  sun 
of  Holiness  to  purify  and  sanctify  it,  was  blos- 
soming and  fading,  whether  the  '  famous  vic- 
tory '  were  won  or  lost.  The  time  seems  coming 
when  much  of  this  must  be  amended."  * 

What  ennobled  history  for  Carlyle  was  the 
"  Infinite  in  human  Life,"  the  highest  revelation 
of  the  divine  Spirit,  as  it  was  revealed  and  was 
to  be  seen  in  human  nature.  "  Wherever  there 
is  a  Man,  a  God  also  is  revealed,  and  all  that 
is  Godlike :  a  whole  epitome  of  the  Infinite  with 


Carlyle's  Essay  on  History,  pp.  259-260. 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  HISTORY.      129 

its  meanings,  lies  enfolded  in  the  Life  of  every 
man."  * 

To  discern  truly  this  revelation,  a  "  seer  "  was, 
of  course,  necessary :  and  it  is  just  here  where, 
according  to  Carlyle,  the  same  talent  must  be- 
come a  part  of  both  the  poet  and  the  truly  great 
historian.  This  is  the  point  at  which  history 
becomes  true  poetry,  where  true  poetry  consists 
in  the  right  interpretation  of  truth,  and  of  fact,  t 

Poetry,  in  the  sense  of  fiction,  of  idle  "  inven- 
tion," is  not  comparable  with  truth ;  the  poet's 
invention  does  not  consist  in  the  creation  of 
dreamy  and  fanciful  forms ;  it  consists  rather  in 
the  after-creation,  in  the  new  revelation  of  divine 
thought,  as  it  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the  ap- 
pearances of  the  world  and  the  world's  history. 
"An  ^schylus  or  a  Sophocles  sang  the  truest 
(which  was  also  the  divinest)  they  had  been 
privileged  to  discover  here  below."  \ 

According  to  Carlyle's  idea,  only  a  Shakspeare 
or  a  Homer  can  discover  the  infinite  meaning 
of  history,  of  human  life.  The  true  historical 
writing  is  that  "  mighty,  world-old  Ehapsodia  of 
Existence,  the  grand,  sacred  Epos,  or  Bible  of 
World-History,  infinite  in  meaning  as  the  Divine 

*  Essay  on  Biography,  p.  58. 

f  Essay  on  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  p.  82. 

|  Essay  on  The  Opera,  p.  124. 


130  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

Mind  it  Emblems ;  wherein  he  is  wise  that  can 
read  here  a  line,  and  there  a  line."  * 

"  Great  men  are  the  inspired  Texts  of  that 
divine  Book  of  Revelation."  t  They,  the  great 
men,  the  "  heroes,"  to  use  Carlyle's  terminology, 
give  their  intrinsic  worth  to  the  world  and  the 
world's  history ;  they  are  the  heart,  the  kernel 
around  which  everything  revolves ;  they  are,  in 
a  certain  sense,  the  creators  of  everything  which 
the  mass  of  people  perform  ;  they  give  the  ideals, 
and  are  the  soul  of  the  world's  history.  % 

We  pause  here  where  the  celebrated  and  vari- 
ously maligned  Hero  -  Worship  offers  an  explana- 
tion. 

Carlyle's  Hero-Worship  rests  upon  the  convic- 
tion that  (if  the  germ  of  the  Divine  is  innate  in 
mankind  yet)  only  the  chosen,  the  "  Heroes," 
whose  duty  it  is  to  bring  truth  to  victory,  are 
sent  from  heaven  to  awaken  dormant  powers,  the 
heroes  whose  command  the  world  must  listen  to, 
for  their  message  comes  directly  from  heaven. 
It  is  this  belief  of  Carlyle's,  finding  representa- 
tives among  the  leading  minds  of  every  age, 
which,  followed  out  even  in  great  ruggedness, 
cannot  possibly  be  settled  by  the  once  thrown 

*  Essay  on  Count  Cagliostro,  p.  65. 
•f  Sartor  Resartus,  bk.  ii.,  p.  122. 
%  Essay  on  Heroes,  i. 


CAELYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  HISTORY.      131 

out  vindication  of  mere  strength  and  force.  It 
is  not  here  the  place  to  examine  more  critically 
this  charge ;  even  as  little  is  it  the  place  to  ex- 
plain the  difference  of  Carlyle's  principles  from 
those  of  Buckle.  It  is  sufficient  to  point  out 
that  Carlyle  never  was  a  representative  of  mere 
"  strength .  and  force."  He  recognizes  only  one 
power,  and  that  is  truth  and  morality ;  a  truth 
whose  victory  must  be  won  by  every  sacrifice, 
by  life  and  by  blood  ;  whose  victory  is  the  cer- 
tain hope  of  all  human  struggles  and  battles. 
"  Right  is  the  eternal  symbol  of  might"  Eight 
gives  might  and  power — is  his  motto,  indeed. 
Right  shall  carry  off  the  victory  which  might  has 
won.  With  this  belief  in  the  victory  of  good  over 
evil  in  the  long  run  ;  in  the  victory  of  good  as 
the  hero  aspires  to  it,  and  for  which  the  hero 
sacrifices  himself,  stands  or  falls  his  whole  view 
of  life.  We  see  that  this  cheerful  and  noble  recog- 
nition of  "  the  heroic "  in  history  can  frighten 
only  the  indolent  nature  into  moral  lethargy. 

Considered  from  Carlyle's  standpoint,  the  les- 
son which  history  teaches  is  unparalleled :  .  the 
world's  history  is  a  message  from  the  past  to 
teach  us  to  understand  the  present  and  the  fu- 
ture ;  it  consists — as  Kingsley  has  expressed  it — * 

*  And  Kingsley's  words  are,  indeed,  the  formulation  of  Car- 
lyle's ideas. 


132  THOMAS   CAKLYLE. 

"  in  the  overwhelming  and  yet  ennobling  knowl- 
edge that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  Duty,  first 
taught  me  to  see  in  history,  not  the  mere  farce- 
tragedy  of  man's  crimes  and  follies,  but  the  deal- 
ings of  a  righteous  Ruler  of  the  Universe,  whose 
ways  are  in  the  great  deep,  and  whom  the  sin 
and  errors,  as  well  as  the  virtues  and  discoveries 
of  man,  must  obey  and  justify." 

In  this  way  Aristotle's  comparison  of  the  poet 
and  historian  finds  explanation  with  Carlyle. 
If  the  task  is  pointed  out,  then  to  the  histor- 
ian,* TO,  yev6[j.eva  M.yeiv,  and  to  the  poet  to  repre- 
sent ola  dv  yevoiro,  and  if  $o  KCU  </«Aocro0u>repoi>  Kal 
OTTovdaiorepov  Troi^ais  laropia^  eariv,  Carlyle,  with 
his  immutable  views  of  the  invariable  govern- 
ment, according  to  the  moral  principles  of  an 
always  judicial  God,  would  have  nothing  to  say 
but  that,  in  general,  only  the  "  philosophical  and 
the  earnest  man "  is  able  to  understand  the 
world's  history,  that  the  task  to  consider  what 
"  might  have  happened "  or  "  ought  to  have 
happened  "  was  far  beyond  the  capacity  of  any 
man,  but  that  it  belonged  to  every  man  to  seri- 
ously endeavour  to  understand  the  revelation  of 
God  and  the  Universe  as  it  exists,  and  history 
as  it  takes  place  before  our  very  eyes  ;  to  under- 

*  Poetics,  ix. 


CARLYLE'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  HISTORY.     133 

stand  that  there  is  no  "  greater  truth  "  and  no 
smaller  truth,  but  only  one  truth,  and  that  the 
one  revealed  in  the  world's  history,  in  the  history 
of  mankind ;  truths,  to  be  sure,  only  discernable 
to  the  wise,  to  the  true  poet  and  the  true  his- 
torian, whose  common  ideal  is  the  recognition  of 
exactly  this  thing,  which  each  in  his  own  way 
strives  to  reach  and  to  teach  to  a  struggling 
world.  Thus  does  Carlyle  apprehend  the  higher, 
indeed,  the  highest  unity  of  poet  and  historian, 
a  unity  which  consists  in  this  common  ideal,  al- 
though their  ways  of  expressing  it  may  be  differ- 
ent, a  unity  that  would  elude  every  eye — but 
which  was  seen  and  felt  and  expressed  by  Goethe 
himself : 

"  Wer  in  der  Weltgeschichte  lebt, 
Dem  Augenblick  soll't  er  sich  richten  ? 
Wer  in  die  Zeiten  schaut  und  strebt, 
Nur  der  ist  wert,  zu  sprechen  und  zu  dichten. " 


CHAPTEK   IX. 
CARLYLE'S  ETHICS, 

"  THE  GOSPEL  OF  WORK." 

Man  must  work  as  well  as  worship. — Sartor  Resartus,  p.  250. 

With  those  ....  who  in  true  manful  endeavour,  were 
it  under  despotism  or  under  sansculottism,  create  somewhat, 
with  those  alone,  in  the  end,  does  the  hope  of  the  world  lie. — 
Carlyle's  Essay  on  Goethe's  Works,  p.  182. 

After  having  attempted  to  comprehend  the 
various  and  important  aspects  of  Carlyle's  views, 
there  only  remains  for  us  now  the  task  of  grasp- 
ing, in  as  few  words  as  possible,  his  complete 
moral  doctrines  which  have  been  expressed  by 
himself  in  the  simplest  and  best  manner : 

"  Love  not  Pleasure,  love  God !  This  is  the 
Everlasting  Yea,  wherein  all  contradiction  is 
solved ;  wherein  whoso  walks  and  works,  it  is 
well  with  him."  * 

The  duty  laid  upon  us  by  God  to  recognize 
the  moral  "  work "  enjoined  upon  us  by  heaven, 


*  Sartor  Resartus,  p.  133. 


CARLYLE'S  ETHICS.  135 

and  to  perform  this  according  to  our  light,  that 
is  the  familiar  doctrine  which  Carlyle,  with  his 
whole  energy,  with  each  page  which  he  wrote, 
tried  to  preach  afresh  to  the  world. 

The  first  step  to  the  fulfilment  of  this  duty  is 
the  recognition  of  it. 

"  If    called   to    define    Shakspeare's   faculty,   I 
should  say  superiority  of  Intellect,  and   think   I 

had  included  all  under  that We  talk 

of  faculties  as  if  they  were  distinct  things  separ- 
able ;  as  if  a  man  had  intellect,  imagination,  fancy, 
etc.,  as  he  has  hands,  feet,  and  arms.  That  is  a 
capital  error.  Then,  again,  we  hear  of  a  man's 
'  intellectual  nature,'  and  of  his  '  moral  nature,' 
as  if  these,  again,  were  divisible,  and  existed  apart. 
....  We  ought  to  know  withal,  and  to  keep 
forever  in  mind  that  these  divisions  are  at  bottom 
but  names;  that  man's  spiritual  nature,  the  vital 
Force  which  dwells  in  him,  is  essentially  one  and 
indivisible  ;  that  what  we  call  imagination,  fancy, 
understanding,  and  so  forth,  are  but  different  fig- 
ures of  the  same  Power  of  Insight,  all  indissolu- 
bly  connected  with  each  other,  physiognomically 

related Morality  itself,  what  we  call 

the  moral  quality  of  a  man,  what  is  this  but 
another  side  of  the  one  vital  Force  whereby  he 
is  and  works  ?  All  that  a  man  does  is  physi- 
ognomical of  him.  You  may  see  how  a  man 


136  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

would  fight  by  the  way  in  which  he  sings ;  his 
courage,  or  want  of  courage,  is  visible  in  the 
word  he  utters,  in  the  opinion  he  has  formed, 
no  less  than  in  the  stroke  he  strikes.  He  is  one; 
and  preaches  the  same  Self  abroad  in  all  these 
ways.  Without  hands  a  man  might  have  feet, 
and  could  still  walk  ;  but,  consider  it, — without 
morality,  intellect  were  impossible  for  him ;  a 
thoroughly  immoral  man  could  not  know  any- 
thing at  all.  To  know  a  thing,  what  we  can  call 
knowing,  a  man  must  first  love  the  thing,  sym- 
pathise with  it :  that  is,  be  virtuously  related  to 
it.  If  he  have  not  the  justice  to  put  down  his 
own  selfishness  at  every  turn,  the  courage  to  stand 
by  the  dangerous — true  at  every  turn,  how  shall 
he  know  ?  His  virtues,  all  of  them,  will  lie  re- 
corded in  his  knowledge.  Nature,  with  her  truth, 
remains  to  the  bad,  to  the  selfish  and  the  pusil- 
lanimous forever  a  sealed  book :  what  such  can 
know  of  Nature  is  mean,  superficial,  small :  for 
the  uses  of  the  day  merely."  * 

This  absolute  unity  of  the  moral  and  the  spirit- 
ual man  gives  significance  to  the  correct  view  of 
life  ;  true  recognition  of  moral  duty  (which,  if 
unconscious,  exists  in  the  soul  most  beautifully) 
leads  to  morality,  so  that  spiritual  greatness  is 

*  Lectures  on  Heroes,  pp.  98-99. 


137 


exceptionally  a  moral  one,  and  the  spiritual  rank 
of  a  nation  brings  with  it  moral  greatness  as  a 
certain  result. 

The  first  moral  act  which  is  obligatory  to  man, 
is  "  Renunciation,"  "  Annihilation  of  Self,"  *  the 
giving  up  of  all  ideas  and  hopes  which  more  or 
less  have  in  view  happiness  for  one's  own  self. 
One's  first  duty  is  to  subordinate  one's  own  pleas- 
ure, one's  own  well-being  to  the  great  everlast- 
ing end  which  heaven  has  set  before  us. 

This  command  appears  severe  and  grim,  but  is 
at  the  same  time  "  beautiful  and  awful ; "  *  it  de- 
mands infinite  labour,  infinite  pains ;  "  a  life  of 
ease  is  not  for  any  man  or  any  God ; "  this 
struggle,  this  "  work "  brings  blessedness  and 
perfects  mankind ;  it  is  the  true  commandment, 
the  essence  of  all  religion ;  it  can  only  be  instilled 
into  us  when  the  consciousness  of  the  eternal  fills 
our  lives.  "  For  the  son  of  man  there  is  no  noble 
crown,  but  is  a  crown  of  thorns ! "  t 

"  Life  is  earnest,"  was  one  of  Carlyle's  favourite 
mottoes ;  but  if  the  path  of  duty  is  rough  and 
stony,  and  the  battles  bitter,  it  is  nevertheless 
destiny  divinely  imposed  upon  us,  and  although 
annihilation  of  self,  and  renunciation  binds  us 


*  Sartor  Kesartus,  p.  132. 

f  Essay  on  Sir  Walter  Scott,  p.  39. 

J  Past  and  Present,  p.  132. 


138'  THOMAS  CAKLYLE. 

and  our  age  conditionally,  Carlyle  declares  with 
reference  to  what  Goethe  and  Schiller  had  taught 
him  that  a  "  higher  morality  "  still  rests  in  the 
lap  of  time,  a  morality  which  leads  all  that  is 
painful,  troublesome  and  harsh  in  humanity  to 
perfectness,  and  into  harmony  with  the  divine 
and  the  "  eternally  beautiful."  * 

In  the  distant  future  Carlyle  hopes  that  this 
harmony  of  the  divine  and  the  human  will  exist 
upon  earth,  will  be  the  condition  of  all  men  whose 
first  and  individual  duty  now  is,  without  mur- 
muring, to  strive  after  the  fulfilment  of  the  di- 
vine duty  of  morality,  t 

This  unconditional  belief  that  harsh  and  stern 
duty  is  "  sent  by  God "  gives  "  a  world  of 
strength  in  return  for  a  world  of  hard  struggle."  £ 

This  is  the  teaching  of  Carlyle's  life  and  works. 


*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Biography,  p.  56. 

f  Carlyle's  words  remind  us  of  the  beautiful  prophecy  with 
which  Emerson  closes  his  "Address,"  delivered  before  the 
Senior  Class  in  Divinity  College,  Cambridge,  July  15,  1838:  "I 
look  for  the  new  Teacher,  that  shall  follow  so  far  those  shining 
laws,  that  he  shall  see  them  come  full  circle ;  shall  see  their 
rounding  complete  grace  ;  shall  see  the  world  to  be  the  mirror 
of  the  soul  ;  shall  see  the  identity  of  the  law  of  gravitation  with 
purity  of  heart ;  and  shall  show  that  the  Ought,  that  Duty,  is 
one  thing  with  Science,  with  Beauty  and  with  Joy."  Here  is  to 
be  found  the  secret  to  Emerson's  and  Carlyl3's  friendship. 

J  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Characteristics,  p.  25. 


CARLYLE'S  ETHICS.  139 

Froude  says  in  his  Life  of  Carlyle :  "  Carlyle 
believed  that  every  man  had  a  special  duty  to 
do  in  this  world.  If  he  had  been  asked  what 
especially  he  conceived  his  own  duty  to  be,  he 
would  have  said  that  it  was  to  force  men  to 
realize  once  more  that  the  world  was  actually 
governed  by  a  just  God ;  that  the  old  familiar 
story,  acknowledged  everywhere  in  words  on 
Sundays,  and  disregarded  or  denied  openly  on 
week-days,  was,  after  all,  true.  His  writings, 
every  one  of  them,  his  essays,  his  lectures,  his 
"History  of  the  French  Revolution,"  his  "Crom- 
well," even  his  "  Frederick,"  were  to  the  same 
purpose  and  on  the  same  text — that  truth  must 
be  spoken  and  justice  must  be  done ;  on  any  other 
conditions  no  real  commonwealth,  no  common 
welfare,  is  permitted  or  possible."  * 

We  shall  conclude  these  remarks  on  Carlyle 
with  the  same  words  which  he  uttered  upon  the 
occasion  of  Goethe's  death :  "  Precious  is  the 
new  light  of  Knowledge  which  our  Teacher  con- 
quers for  us ;  yet  small  to  the  new  light  of  Love 
which  also  we  derive  from  him :  the  most  im- 
portant element  of  any  man's  performance  is  the 
Life  he  has  accomplished.  Under  the  intellect- 


*  Froude's  Life  of  Carlyle,  Franklin  Square  Edition,  vol.  iii., 
p.  49. 


140  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

ual  union  of  man  and  man,  which  works  by  pre- 
cept, lies  a  holier  union  of  affection,  working  by 
example  ;  the  influence  of  which  latter,  mystic, 
deep-reaching,  all-embracing,  can  still  less  be 
computed.  For  Love  is  ever  the  beginning  of 
Knowledge,  as  fire  is  of  light ;  and  works  also 
more  in  the  manner  of  fire.  That  Goethe  was  a 
great  Teacher  of  men  means  already  that  he  was 
a  good  man."  * 

According  to  our  innermost  conviction,  we  can 
and  must  apply  this  to  Carlyle.  His  infirmities 
and  deficiencies — which  he  himself  in  the  last 
years  of  his  life  was  inclined  to  assail  too  severe- 
ly, but  which  was  natural  to  a  man  whose  moral 
claims  were  of  such  greatness,  and  to  a  man  of 
his  excitability  of  disposition — his  faults  and  his 
exaggerations,  his  enigmatic  melancholy,  which  so 
often  embittered  the  pleasures  of  life  for  himself 
and  those  about  him ;  all  this,  which  has  been 
so  forcibly  and  willingly  portrayed  by  his  adver- 
saries, and  is  so  easy  to  portray ;  all  this,  is  not 
able  to  cloud  a  picture  of  this  magnificent  man 
which  lives  in  the  hearts  of  his  admirers.  "When 
he  is  fully  known,  he  will  not  be  loved  or  admired 
the  less  because  he  had  infirmities  like  the  rest 
of  us."  t 


*  Carlyle's  Essay  on  the  Death  of  Goethe. 

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